


I Gave You My Heart

by ishtarelisheba



Series: my annual Christmas fic things [3]
Category: Once Upon a Time (TV)
Genre: Angst with a Happy Ending, Baby Baelfire, F/M, Lacey French - Freeform, Will Scarlett - Freeform, Woobie Rumple, and featuring, quick cameos by, some offscreen minor-ish deaths happen between chapters two and three
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-12-01
Updated: 2019-12-31
Packaged: 2021-02-26 05:33:58
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 23
Words: 48,638
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21638164
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ishtarelisheba/pseuds/ishtarelisheba
Summary: Suddenly homeless and responsible for a newborn son, Whit Gold is in a hopeless situation. That is, hopeless until an absolute stranger steps in to keep him from quite literally being tossed out in the cold, sweeping him into a small lie that leads to innumerable more in the aftermath of a tragedy. With Christmas looming, Whit finds himself assumed family, and it's only a matter of time before they learn the truth.(A Mrs. Winterbourne movie AU.)
Relationships: Belle/Rumplestiltskin | Mr. Gold, RumBelle
Series: my annual Christmas fic things [3]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/2031832
Comments: 396
Kudos: 139





	1. Chapter 1

It wasn’t for a good fifteen minutes that he realized the doorway he hunkered in to get himself and his son out of the rain belonged to a church. Not that it mattered much. The church was closed and locked, likely with purpose. No one was going to fulfil his fantasy of coming out to invite him in to get warm and dry and fed.

Bay whimpered inside his coat. He pulled back the unbuttoned corner enough to see his son’s face in the rain-smothered streetlight. The baby didn’t cry, but he obviously wasn’t happy. Not that Whit could blame him. 

“We’ll be all right,” he told his son, reaching in to stroke the baby’s cheek before tugging his coat closed again to keep body heat inside. “I’ll figure something out. Yeah, we’ll be all right.”

Was it a good thing or a bad thing that Bay would never know his mother? His own mother was long, long gone. He had only a handful of memories of her. There were moments when he still missed her, even based only on those memories, but he remembered her being kind. She’d died long before he could retain enough of her in his mind to last a lifetime.

He was going to be a good father, though. God knew he had enough examples on how to be a bad one. Doing the opposite of everything Malcolm Gold did, that was a great place to start.

To say he and his father didn’t get along after his mother died was a dire understatement. In retrospect, he saw that she had been a buffer between them. A shield, trying to appease everyone with peace. He survived without her. Sometimes only just, but he survived.

For his father’s part in things, he’d kept Whit ground firmly under his heel. He wouldn’t do that to Bay. He wouldn’t feed his son scraps and keep the best for himself. He wouldn’t take every penny his son managed to make. He wouldn’t turn his son into a mule to be beaten and trained and then abandoned with less than nothing.

His father died as he lived - trying to take advantage of everyone he crossed paths with. A young woman made him regret putting his hands on her at the end of a three inch pocket knife. 

Taking his carefully hidden savings - every penny he could keep without suspicion over the course of _years,_ \- Whit was on a plane to the States before the last bruised cheek and cut lip his father gave him had healed. The prospect of making a life of his own was as daunting as it was a relief, but he had to get away from the fetor his father left over everything he knew.

The plane landed in Hartford, Connecticut, and he hadn’t the first idea where to go from there. He’d gotten as far as sight of the exit and couldn’t bring himself to leave the airport without knowing what he was going to do. Retreating to the first place he saw when he turned away from the doors, he went into a little bistro and asked for a cup of coffee, afraid to spend too much of what he had left. 

And there was Milah. Working the counter, she poured his coffee and leaned across from him, giving him a big smile along with it. She was tall, beautiful, and flirted as easily as she sailed between customers to fill their orders. For some reason he couldn’t understand, she kept coming back to refill his coffee and chat in his direction. She didn’t tell him to order something else or make space, and he stayed through the rest of the day out of sheer lack of anywhere else to go. When business thinned to almost nothing, she came around to sit on the stool next to him. 

“What are you still doing here?” she’d asked, leaning close. “Aren’t you fresh off the boat?”

She talked at length about the whys and wherefores of ending up in a strange land, herself. Her family was enormous, she said, as though it were some terrible thing. “I never got enough attention to suit me. So I’m damn well going to get attention on my own.”

When he very briefly admitted to leaving Scotland to start over, she laughed and walked away. She’d gone into the kitchen and returned with a cupcake and a candle. 

“Make a wish,” Milah told him, stabbing the striped birthday candle into the cupcake and digging a matchbook from her uniform pocket to light it.

“That’s for birthdays,” he protested. He blew out the small flame, though, and wished. _A life. Family. To not have to be afraid._

With a bright white smile that made him self-conscious, she said, “Hey, any excuse for a cupcake,” and kissed him on the cheek.

While he picked at the cupcake, she told him about herself in precisely the way he couldn’t. In perhaps the most resentful tone he’d ever heard outside of his father, she called herself an ‘expiring’ aspiring actress and lamented that no one would hire her because of her age. Whit couldn’t imagine anyone turning her down for anything.

“You’re cute,” she said when he told her just that.

Reaching into her pocket again, she pulled out a card, handing it to him. One side was printed with a miniature headshot. Her information was on the reverse. It was clever. A business card for auditions.

Whit was not accustomed to women wanting to spend time with him. At all. Back home, everyone knew his father and wanted nothing to do with him. Milah’s flirtation and nearness were novel. Flattering. He had no reason to distrust her. 

At the end of the night, she’d invited him to stay with her, knowing he had nowhere else to go. It was _nice_ at first, if intense. They had sex that first night, quickly, on the sofa she had only just given him sheets and a pillow for. She brushed him off afterward and went to bed as if nothing much had happened, leaving him sort of stunned and oddly lonely. Whit hadn’t been around the block that many times. He felt like he’d missed something.

Milah was… well, he interpreted it as nice. She did quite a lot of yelling, but she always made it up to him after losing her temper. No matter how intimate they became, she made it clear that he was in no way welcome in her bed. The sofa was his. It wasn’t as though he had a right to feel anything less than grateful. He had a roof over his head, food in his stomach. Starting out with literally nothing save what was in the knapsack that was his carry-on, he could only be glad that she shared what she had.

His difficulty in getting a job started to make the atmosphere around her apartment tense after a while. It took a grocery store supervisor glancing down at his hands during an interview to remind him of his father. Not out of grief or sentiment, but for sake of pure manipulation, Malcolm had continued to wear his wedding ring. He believed that even the stingiest bastard would be more willing to extend credit to a man with a family.

Whit found a cheap, gold-plated ring at the consignment shop and by some miracle _it worked._ His next interview won him a place in a little chain fabric shop. Milah quit her own job almost immediately, declaring that its crushing of her spirit showed through in auditions, keeping her from getting roles.

He didn’t really notice the gradual downhill slide in the way she behaved toward him. It wasn’t until the first time she rung his ears with a slap that he began taking stock. Wanting to stop it changed nothing, however. He had nowhere to go and no money to create a place, with everything he made going toward rent, bills, and food, and the rest into Milah’s pocket. Familiar with the feeling, Whit saved what he could. A dollar here, some change there, all squirrelled away in carefully folded socks at the bottom of his knapsack. 

Locked in the bathroom with his bag while Milah slept, he dug out his mother’s engagement ring from the torn lining, unfolding the handkerchief that it lived in. They were the only things of his mother’s he’d been able to keep, and only these as a result of sneaking and hiding them. His father would have long ago sold them, had they fallen into his possession.

Holding the ring, tilting it in the glaring light, he could remember it on his mother’s hand. “Don’t suppose you might see fit to give me a sign, Mum?” he whispered, touching the partially empty setting. “Something? Anything?”

Perhaps he should have been more specific. 

One evening when he’d gotten off work, Milah came out of the bathroom and threw a wet piece of plastic at his chest. He had fumbled with it for a moment before he could turn it right side up and read the word ‘ᴘʀᴇɢɴᴀɴᴛ’ on its small gray display.

“Milah?” he breathed, smiling up at her.

“I’m pregnant, you asshole.” She stood over him, arms crossed, not looking happy at all. As a matter of fact, she appeared rather enraged. “Do you think I’ll ever get a fucking callback _now?”_

His smile disappeared under her anger. She uncrossed her arms to slap him around the head, one after another, pounding a fist against his shoulder when he shrank in to protect himself.

She pushed hard at him before screaming and walking to the far side of the room. “I don’t want a kid! Least of all _yours!”_

“Oh,” he responded weakly. “We were careful. I- I was careful.”

Milah turned a sneer on him. “Not enough, apparently.”

Whit hadn’t known what to do. No. That wasn’t quite true. He’d known. He couldn’t make her keep it. If she didn’t want it, then he wouldn’t force her to go through with a pregnancy, even if the choice were his. 

He couldn’t stop himself from imagining holding a baby, though. Holding his child. The feeling of a swaddled infant in his arms, warm against his chest. But he kept his mouth shut as days passed, and then weeks, and she made no mention of an appointment. 

It took every scrap of courage he could pull together to approach her while she sat on the sofa fiddling with her phone. He made a peace offering of her favorite decaf flat white with caramel from the corner coffee shop before quietly saying, “I’d take it.”

“You didn’t have them add enough syrup.” She made a face before looking up at him. “What?”

“If- _if_ you decided to have the baby, I would take care of it.” He shook his head. “You don’t- you won’t have to have anything to do with it. Not if you don’t want to.”

“You _want_ it?” she asked, eyeing him up and down, and he was unsure whether it was with doubt or disdain.

“Aye. If you have the baby. I’ll take it. If you want.”

“I’ll think about it.”

What followed were approximately seven and a half months of hell. She hated him. There was no disguising it. Yelling and sounds of thrown objects from the apartment drove neighbors to call the police more than once. She always met them at the door to invite them in, and it always ended the same way. The officers had a good chuckle to themselves at his expense, giving him ‘reassurances’ along the lines of, “pregnancy hormones are a monster, man,” and “sometimes you just gotta go along to get along.”

His wee little Bayard Oliver was born on October 29, perfect in every way. Bayard, for Whit’s mother’s maiden name, and Oliver as a form of Bay’s own mother’s middle name. He didn’t know how that would feel in the future, but the future as a whole was uncertain at that point, and the way it looked, a name might be the only thing Bay ever got from his mother.

The hospital sent Milah home on the first day of November. On the third, she told him to leave.

Whit had hoped to appeal for more time. “He’s a newborn. Give me a couple of months, let me find a place to live, find a-”

“You said you’d take it. You wanted it,” she pointed out. “And I told you I didn’t. I don’t want him here, and I don’t want you here, either.”

“It’s November,” he reminded her, as though he thought she’d forgotten. “You can’t put us out in this weather.”

“Then find somewhere that’s indoors. It’s not that hard, Whit.”

And that was the depth and breadth of his relationship with Milah. With little more than he boarded the plane with, he was without a place to live. Only now he had a newborn to take care of.

His very meager savings paid for a motel room, but that wasn’t a permanent solution. For one, he didn’t have enough money to stay for an extended period. For another, the motel itself had a distinctly unsafe feeling to it. The gunfire that wakened them in the middle of the night and being able to see daylight around the edges of the door probably contributed to that. At least the heater worked.

After a few days, his savings ran out. Getting his first paycheck of the month was a heart-stopping relief - it would help keep them afloat on the room and food for a couple of weeks. The day after receiving his pay, he was called into the manager’s office to discuss just how often he’d been late or called out recently. They didn’t care that he couldn’t always find someone to look after his son. They needed a reliable employee, and Whit had ceased to be one. He was, as they so diplomatically put it, ‘let go.’

The last of his money went frittering away on such luxuries as food, formula, diapers, and the motel, until it was gone, too. He found a despair he’d never felt before, when all he had to take care of was himself. Looking after Bay was important, and he had failed miserably.

Not for the first time, he thought of his mother’s ring. He could sell it. Pawn it. They could probably live two weeks off what it would bring. The very idea hurt him, though, and had a distinct aftertaste of his father’s behavior.

That first night at a homeless shelter, giving them his and his son’s names, being looked at the way they looked at him, was an exercise in humiliation. Seeing some others stow their phones on themselves before lying down, Whit took to keeping his phone and his mother’s ring in his coat pocket. He got two nights out of the shelter before the man in the next cot accused him of drinking. A beer can under his own cot, having mysteriously appeared while he was in the restroom, was evidence enough to get him asked to leave under the shelter’s zero tolerance policy. 

Rain came down hard, then harder still. Temperatures were predicted to drop below freezing after dark. And Whit was about to spend his first night on the street with his son wrapped in layers of receiving blankets inside his coat. Very soon, he would have to figure out a way to feed Bay. It would be nice to have something to eat for himself, too. The baby was hungry, scream-crying, and the sound hurt his heart. 

He choked down yet more humiliation and walked back to Milah’s apartment, buzzing at the door. “Milah? It’s Whit,” he said when it picked up. “I- I’m here with Bay. The baby. We need a place for the night.”

Someone responded, but it wasn’t Milah. A man’s voice came across the intercom. “Yeah, she doesn’t want to talk to you. Find a bench to drown on, mate.”

She was there. Whit could hear her laugh in the background. He stepped down from the stoop and went around to the window he knew was hers. 

“Milah! We just need a place to sleep tonight! _Please?”_ he yelled up at the brightly lit window, bringing a few others to their windows, as well.

He could have swallowed his tongue when she actually opened the front door. She stood there with the door opened just enough to talk through, one hand braced on it as though he’d try to force his way in.

“What the hell do you want?” she asked.

“It’s pouring. And freezing. We need a place to sleep,” he explained under her sharp gaze. “Bay needs something to eat. He’s hungry. If you’ll just-”

“Look, Whit, this isn’t your home anymore. If I’m being honest, it never was. I wouldn’t have let you stay as long as I did if I hadn’t been waiting for you to take that with you.” Milah gave the baby a pointed look. “I don’t owe you anything.”

He shook his head. “No, no, I didn’t say ‘owe.’ We only need somewhere safe for the night. Don’t you want your son to be-”

“He is _not_ my son,” she snapped.

A man with shaggy black hair and a heavy layer of stubble thumped down the stairs behind her, his chin jutted out in an effort at showing himself to be a threat. “Do you want me to get rid of him, love?”

Milah looked over at the man. “No. I got it.” She turned back to Whit. “You know what? I’ve tried being nice, but I’m done. I never loved you. I pitied you for a while. I used you as far as you were good for. But I never loved you.”

She pulled the door shut hard and the pair of them went upstairs without another look at him. For a few moments, he stood there in shock. Hurt and anger rose in his chest, and he clenched his jaw to hold it all back. Whatever he felt, he still had to look after his son. _His_ son. He cradled his arms around the baby inside his coat. No matter what he had to do, he had to take care of Bay.

Whit made certain that the rain and wind couldn’t get to his son before he stepped back onto the sidewalk. If he could just get out of the weather for a few minutes, get warm, maybe he could think.

He walked, searching for _something,_ unable to remember the last time he’d actually slept more than a few minutes at a go. Like everything else, he couldn’t afford sleep. He was weak, and he was tired to the point of stupidity, and only made it as far as the next dip in the wall of shops before sitting down on a covered doorstep belonging to a church. Whit curled himself to make a place as warm for Bay as he could.

“That’s my spot!” a man yelled at him from the sidewalk, rapidly closing in on him. “Hey! That’s my spot!”

Whit startled and Bay once again cried from inside his coat.

The man was as soaked as he was, scruffy and a bit dirty, wrapped in a tattered blanket and obviously going through harder times for longer than he had, himself. Whit reached for the edge of the brick around the recessed door, pulling himself up.

When the man heard Bay crying, he seemed less angry. “You needing a place to stay?” he asked almost kindly. “There’s a shelter up past Kris Street. Takes all kinds. Baby’ll get you to the head of the line. They make you pray over it, but the food’s all right.”

 _“Thank you,”_ Whit said, more grateful than he could express, and he headed in the direction the man pointed him.

Before he could get through the more well-to-do Kris Street, the rain began roaring down. He looked to duck into the nearest place. There was a hotel, brightly lit and clean, and most importantly, featuring a doorman distracted by two small dogs sniffing with purpose at a fancy potted plant. Whit slipped past him.

There weren’t many people lingering around. They were either on their way in or out, looking as though they had somewhere important to be. He kept his eyes on the arrangement of big, burgundy sofas at the far side of the lobby and tried to imitate the same look he saw on others’ faces.

The sofa deepest into the lobby, where no one wandered past, that was the one he wanted. It would be safest, he thought. They made it there without being called out on not belonging. He put his bag at his feet and sat all the way at the end, leaning into the soft corner, and opened his coat. Bay squeezed his eyes shut at being taken out of the dark, the shock of it cutting off his cries. He started to whimper and Whit shushed him, bringing the baby up onto his shoulder to rub his back.

“It’s all right,” he murmured. “Everything will be all right. Papa will make sure of it.”

He made up his mind. When shops opened in the morning, he would take his mother’s ring down and pawn it. The plan made his heart ache, but his mother wouldn’t want him or her grandchild to starve to death. If nothing else, selling it would give him more time to figure out another job.

It took a few worrying minutes of comforting and looking around to check whether anyone was getting curious about a crying baby, but his son calmed and fell asleep. Being warm and headed toward eventually being dry, Whit leaned his head against the tall sofa arm. He closed his eyes for a moment.

Falling asleep was the farthest thing from his intentions. He wakened with a startle to someone’s insistently cleared throat. The baby began to cry again, and Whit looked up to find quite a large man standing over him.

“We don’t allow vagrants to squat in our hotel,” the man said, glaring down on him with clear distaste.

Whit sat up, groggy and attempting to calm his son again. “I’m not a vagrant,” he tried to tell the man - a _manager,_ according to the pin on his jacket. “I’m not squatting. Just meant to sit for a minute.”

He moved Bay to the bend of his arm and reached down for his knapsack. It wasn’t there. Whit stood, looking around, but his bag was well and truly gone.

The manager jabbed his fists onto his hips. “Let me see your room key, then.”

For a second, Whit floundered. Until his eyes caught the cheap gold band still on his ring finger. “My wife,” he said. “She has the room keys. Didn’t trust me with them.”

“Wife?” the manager repeated incredulously.

He gestured vaguely toward the front of the lobby. “She’s here, out there.”

When the manager turned to look, Whit hurried in the direction of the restaurant off the lobby. It was big, nice, _crowded,_ and no place to make a scene. His only hope was getting lost in the people there.


	2. Chapter 2

A wave of warm air, noise, and food smells washed over him, making his stomach growl. He had to push away the thought of hunger. Glancing back over his shoulder, he saw the man who found him sleeping on the lobby sofa closer behind than he expected. 

Whit darted a desperate look around before taking a couple of steps over to the bar. He placed himself between a group of men in crisp suits and a petite woman wearing a navy blue, crushed velvet tracksuit with an Australian flag embroidered across the backside. The top was half unzipped and draped off one shoulder to reveal a sequined tank top strap. She looked as if she were waiting.

She glanced over at him and his son and smiled. “Hi!” she said to Bay in the voice people used only for greeting babies. “Aren’t you a clever little gentleman?”

“Mrs…” The cashier looked at a ticket taped to the counter. “Scarlet-French? Your order is being put together. It’ll only be another moment.”

“Thanks,” the woman next to him replied. She tapped her short, glittery manicure on the counter, barely concealing impatience. 

He felt himself yanked by his coat, spun around by force. “Wife has the keys, huh? I knew you were lying. Time you find somewhere else to squat.”

“What do you mean, ‘lying’?” the woman next to him asked with a snarky tilt of her head, narrowing big blue eyes at the other man. “Are you accusing my husband of something?”

Whit stared at her in shock for a second before he understood that she was trying to help him. There was indeed a wedding ring set on her hand - a very sparkly one, he saw, when she poked the manager square in the middle of his tie.

The manager was brought up short. “I caught him sleeping in the lobby. I thought-”

“You thought _what?”_ Lacey pulled a key card from her hoodie pocket, raising it up into the man’s eyeline. “Is this proof enough?”

“Yes, ma’am. My apologies,” the manager said, letting go of Whit’s coat.

She didn’t let it go that easily, however. “I don’t think I like the way you said ‘caught.’”

The man shook his head. “I didn’t mean-”

Whit wasn’t sure what he was witnessing, but his night had become measurably better simply by virtue of watching this woman take a man three times her size down a half dozen notches.

“So, the restaurant is super short handed, couldn’t get room service up for a couple of hours, and we’re told we could shorten the wait by picking it up at the bar. And when we _do_ come down to get it ourselves, my husband is accused of squatting?” She stepped toward the manager and he took a step back. “What the hell kind of hotel is this?”

“I’m very sorry, ma’am. I made a bad assumption,” the manager said.

“Yeah, you did.”

“Please, allow me to comp your meals during your stay.”

“It’s the least you could do.” She turned away from him, the twist of wild waves in her dark auburn hair bouncing. She took the fancy paper bag holding her food when the lady at the register set it down, handing it to Whit. “Here, honey. I told you it was a bad idea to go out in this weather.”

Whit took the bag, flustered. “Yeah. You were right.”

The manager, a bit shame-faced, turned and left.

“Thank you,” Whit said. “Thank you so much, Miss- Mrs.-”

“No prob.” She gave him a cocky smile. “I’m Lacey.”

“Whitney. I’m sorry to have dragged you into it,” he apologized, adjusting how he held his son.

“You didn’t drag me into anything. The manager is a horse’s ass.” Lacey took her food back. When Bay fussed, she reached out to touch his head, straightening his little knit cap. “I can’t believe you’ve been out in this with a baby.”

He flushed, and the rest of him might have been freezing, but his face went hot. “I was headed to the shelter down the way…”

“Come on. You’re with me for now,” she told Whit, shooing him out into the lobby with her. She curled her hand around his elbow before they passed the manager, who still lurked about the front desk.

On the not inconsiderable elevator journey, he caught his reflection in the mirrored doors. He understood even less why she’d ventured to help him. It had to be about the baby. She certainly couldn’t have pitied the wet rat he saw there.

“We had _no_ idea it was gonna be so damn crowded,” she said, pulling him to the side with her to dodge a small group of teenagers. “Apparently there’s some college game this weekend.”

Lacey keyed open a door and went in, waving him after her into what must have been one of the nicer rooms in the hotel. A brief entryway opened into a spacious area with two beds on one side and a living and dining room setup on the other. He stood in the middle, worried he would get something dirty if he planted himself on any surface.

The door barely closed before someone else came in after them. “They had formula in the hotel shop,” a man declared in a rather thick Derbyshire accent. “Did you remember the szechuan sauce? I forgot to say something about it before we went down.”

Whit turned, surprised to find the man had a baby who looked very near Bay’s age in a carrier on his chest. No wonder Lacey took such pity on him.

There was surprise reflected on the other man’s face, as well. He raised a pair of substantial eyebrows. “Oh. Hello, then,” he said and gave Lacey an almost comically bewildered look. “Lace, somethin’ I oughta know?”

“You took too long. I found another one,” she replied quite deadpan. “This one even came with his own baby. I didn’t have to do a thing.”

“Ah, well, suppose I’ll have to pop back down to the shop for a replacement, myself. There was a woman took to Neal right quick,” the man fired back goodnaturedly.

They exchanged a grin and she stepped away from the small dining table to kiss him. “The manager was trying to oust him. I couldn’t let him be kicked out in that mess.”

“Yeah, ’course not.” The man looked to Whit with a smile. “Has a thing for men with babies, doesn’t she? Name’s Will. This here would be Neal. Or Em, maybe? Er, it’s Neal Emeric. Still feeling that pet name thing out.”

“Whit Gold.” He began unwrapping his own son, who was blessedly dry despite his father’s sodden condition. “This is Bay.”

“Jesus,” Will said, sympathetic. You’re soaked through, ain’t you?”

Whit looked at the great picture window, where the storm beat against the glass. “I’ve been-” 

“Out in it, yeah?” Will handed the baby over to Lacey. “I’ve got some clothes. You’ll borrow ’em while yours dry out, right? Probably a bit big, there, but they’ll do.”

Will started going through a suitcase before Whit could answer. He took out a heavy, cabled pullover and a pair of cargo pants. “Go on in, get yourself cleaned up,” he said, putting the clothes over Whit’s shoulder and guiding him toward the bathroom. With the dopiest of grins, he added, “’S all right, nobody’ll peep in on you.”

Carefully, Whit laid his son down on the big, cartoon-covered changing pad that was spread out on the bathroom counter. Bay hadn’t yet tried to roll over, but he wouldn’t risk it. He stood within immediate arm’s reach to peel his clothes off.

The things Will had loaned him were… extremely nice. Though they were fairly plain, the labels were designer. He looked at his own things, holes in them, dirty, and felt as if he would be soiling the nice clothes by putting them on. Whit cast a glance at the big shower.

“Is it all right if I wash up?” he called through the door.

It was Lacey who answered. “Shower, bath, whatever you want. You’re good.”

He unwrapped Bay’s blankets and layered them in the sink, then placed his son in with them where he could see the baby while he showered. It was a quick but thorough scrub. The way the water pressure beat down on him, he didn’t think he’d ever felt as clean. He tucked his phone and his mother’s ring in separate trouser pockets once he had them on.

Will waited with a warmed bottle of formula when he came out of the bathroom. “He doesn't need anything particular, does he? Nothing special, allergies or such? I can run back down to the shop.”

“No.” Whit shook his head. “No, nothing special.”

“Here you go, then.” Will handed the bottle over to him. “More where that came from, too.”

Lacey nudged in, something in her hand. “We have more baby clothes than we know what to do with. Here, if you want to change him into something clean.”

“And more than enough diapers.” Turning on his heel, Will went to rummage through a diaper bag, and quickly resorted to bringing the entire thing over.

Whit sat on the side of the unused bed. He fed his son while fighting not to cry over how kind this pair of absolute strangers were being to him. After a few minutes, he felt tears slide down his cheeks anyway, and Lacey sat next to him to offer a few awkward pats between his shoulderblades.

His son was full and sleepy and happy as a clam by the time the bottle was empty. When Whit laid the baby down to change his diaper, Will stood by, providing assistance by handing him supplies from the diaper bag. 

“Guess the rain might be a good thing after all,” Lacey said as she reheated the food she’d brought up from the restaurant. “Our plane had to reroute because of the storm, so we rented a car to drive. Then the storm got too violent to drive in, so we decided to stop for the night. We’re still a long way from home. But if it weren’t for the storm, we wouldn’t be here.”

“Going to meet Lace’s family for the first time. Bit nervous.” Will chuckled, scuffing a sockfoot against the carpet. He crossed to the little hotel issue pack-and-play, where their own son slept, to check on him, and came back. “She promises I won’t be mauled, but she hasn’t seen ’em in years, either, so I don’t know how far to take that promise.”

“Oh, you’ll be fine,” she told him. “Whit, when you’re finished there, you can help us eat all this. There’s more than enough to go around.”

Whit glanced up. He couldn’t deny he’d hoped they might offer, but it still felt like too much. “You don’t have to do that.”

She blew a ‘pff’ sound between her teeth. “Nonsense. Like we’d eat and not feed you.”

His son was happy enough to get through a diaper change without fussing. Whit put the incredibly nice, clean baby clothes on Bay and brought the baby up against his shoulder, cuddling him close. Bay made contented little sounds near his ear, hands grasping and opening in the knit of the pullover he wore. By the time they finished dinner, the baby was sound asleep.

Lacey smiled at him. “The sounds they make when they’re asleep are the best. Neal does this tiny popping noise with his tongue right before he wakes up sometimes.”

“Sometimes Bay sighs as if he’s had the longest day imaginable,” Whit said, tilting his head to touch his cheek to his son’s hair.

She looked over at her husband, who was absorbed in something on his phone, and gave him a prod in the side. “Will. Tell him he’s going to stay with us tonight.”

Brows raised, Will looked up at him. Nodding in agreement, he said, “So you’re sleeping here tonight. No argument, yeah?”

Whit glanced to the extra bed. He positively ached to bury himself under the covers. “You don’t mind?”

“We insist.” Lacey took a last sip from her glass of white wine before going to take her son out of the pack-and-play. “Will, move this over between the beds.”

Feeling as though he should be doing something more than sitting by, Whit got up from the table, too, though all he could do was stand there while the small playpen was relocated. Lacey soothed Neal’s bit of fretting at being moved and put him back down to sleep.

“We were going to watch a movie or something,” she said, smoothing a hand over her son’s dark hair before raising up. “You do whatever you want to. Watch with us, or if you want to go to bed, don’t feel like you have to stay up.”

“Thank you,” Whit said, and it didn’t seem like enough. “For everything. You- you didn’t have to do any of this.”

She shrugged. “Maybe not. Would’ve been pretty crappy to just ignore you, though.” Lacey grinned and touched his forearm as she passed him on her way into the living room. Her husband followed.

Whit held onto Bay for a while longer. He couldn’t account for it, but just now, in the moment, he felt that they were safe. 

Putting Bay down to sleep beside Neal, he sat on the bed nearer the window, where he earlier fed and changed his son. He hadn’t slept in a decent bed in a very long time. Even the motel they’d been able to stay in for a while hadn’t had much in the way of a bed, considering the springs and sagging. He set his phone on the nightstand and climbed beneath the blankets, leaving the light on next to the bed. 

Once his head was on the pillow, he was gone. It wasn’t until Lacey and Will began getting ready for bed themselves that he woke a bit. He could tell that they tried to go about things without making too much noise, but his sleep was light these days.

“Let me see your phone,” Lacey whispered.

“Bugger. Should’ve offered the poor bloke some PJs. Feel bad about that,” Will said quietly. “Phone? Why?”

She got into bed with a light creak of the mattress. “I want to check on my farm and mine still won’t run the update.”

“Here, go on, check your neeps and tatties, don’t let the cows go unmilked,” her husband teased.

“Butt,” Lacey said, then, “Thanks.”

If they made more noise, Whit didn’t know it. A baby’s crying woke him sometime over in the morning, and Will was out of bed only a second after him. It wasn’t Bay who cried. The tune Neal sang was beginning to rouse him, though. Bay’s face wrinkled, relaxing again as Will scooped Neal up.

“I’m gonna take him for a walk down the hallway ’til he calms down. No sense waking everybody, yeah?” Will said quietly, grabbing a blanket and the diaper bag. “Lace is passed out on top of my phone. Mind if I snag yours for a few minutes, just in case?”

“Sure, yeah.” Whit passed his phone across the playpen.

He very much doubted that Will would take off with it. Even if he had a mind to, what was it worth? The phone itself was cheap and almost out of minutes. His ID was in the case, but it was worthless, too.

Making certain that his son was all right, he made a quick visit to the bathroom. By the time he returned, Bay was just beginning to fret, snubbing a little, and Whit picked him up before he could get started. He gave Bay a bottle and a diaper change, and by the time the baby was back down, he was out like a light. Whit felt close to the same. He burrowed into the blankets once more.

Drifting off, he caught the smell of smoke. Someone sneaking around for a cigarette in a place as nice as this was a bit of a surprise. They’d be in some terrible kind of trouble if that hardarse of a manager caught them out.


	3. Chapter 3

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> _(Minor-ish character deaths warning. Offscreen and nongraphic.)_

Death notifications were the worst part of the job. She’d rather be dodging bullets in a convenience store holdup than telling next of kin that their loved ones would never be coming home. And notifications were what she and a dozen other pair of officers had been doing all day. Blowing out a breath, waiting for her rookie to catch up, Mulan knocked on yet another door.

“This sucks,” Gus said, shaking his arms out as he came to stand next to her.

“It always sucks,” she told him, “but pay attention. You’ll be doing a few of these before shift is over.”

The door opened, answered by a woman who seemed to be wearing only a t-shirt. A television blared in the room behind her and a man yelled, “Bring me a beer while you’re up, love!”

She gave a lazy roll of her eyes before looking both officers up and down. “I take it you’re not a strip-o-gram, huh?”

“Milah Winter?” Mulan asked to verify.

The woman confirmed with a wary, “That’s me.” 

“I’m afraid I have some bad news.” When Ms. Winter gave her only an expectant look, Mulan went on. “Do you know a Whitney Gold?”

Ms. Winter’s expression turned further suspicious. “Why?”

“The hotel fire across town,” Mulan explained carefully. “Whitney Gold’s cell phone and ID were found. He succumbed to the smoke. He and an accompanying infant both died. I’m sorry, Ms.-”

“How did you find me?” the woman in front of her asked.

“Your business card was in his phone case alongside an emergency contact card.” Mulan had the case and contents, along with the man’s wedding band, bagged and in her coat pocket. 

There was an entire box of similar belongings in her cruiser trunk just in case next of kin asked for something tangible. She wasn’t sure she would ever get the smell of burning to go away.

Something crossed Ms. Winter’s face, but she shrugged an instant later. “I leave my cards all over town,” she said with a smile. “I’m an actress. I give them out like napkins.”

Mulan searched her expression. “So you don’t know him?”

“Never heard of the guy,” she said, shrugging again.

There was something off. Mulan seriously doubted that this woman was a complete stranger to Whitney Gold. That didn’t quite track. “Let me give you a card. If you happen to remember-”

Ms. Winter’s reply was a very curt, “I won’t,” before shutting the door in their faces.

Gus raised an eyebrow. _“That_ was weird.”

“Yeah. It was.” Mulan looked at the door as though she might see through if she stared hard enough.

Taking a card with her information on it from her pocket anyway, she wedged it in behind the plastic number below the peephole. Maybe the woman would have second thoughts at some point, but they weren’t half done with their list of notifications. It was going to be a long day.

⫯⫰⫯⫰⫯⫰⫯⫰⫯⫰⫯⫰⫯⫰⫯⫰⫯⫰⫯⫰⫯⫰⫯⫰⫯⫰⫯

The first thing Whit was aware of was a rhythmic beeping. The next was that he hurt. His head hurt, his lungs hurt. He was sore all over. 

He pried his eyes open against bright light that made them want to screw shut again. Something smelled cold and sharp. The beep continued, and he finally realized it belonged to a monitor of some sort. A hospital room. A hospital room?

Confusion made his head hurt worse. Last he remembered, he was in the hotel. He’d just gone back to bed after settling Bay down to sleep.

Bay. Where was Bay?

Whit sat up, searching for a call button, his head spinning sickeningly. It turned out he didn't need the button. The monitor’s quickened beeping brought a nurse with short black hair and a set of bluebird print scrubs hurrying into the room.

“Oh, oh, okay, sir,” the nurse said, touching a button on the monitor to silence it. She smiled as she checked things around him. “Good morning! I’m Nurse Blanchard. I’ll be your nurse during the day shift today.”

“Where is my son?” He reached out for her and managed to grab hold of one of her pockets. “My son was with me - a baby, not quite a month old - _where is he?”_

She took his hand off of her scrub top, patting it. “Your son is fine.”

“He’s all right? You’re sure?”

“He’s just fine. He’s in the nursery. Here, sit back.” She pushed his pillows back into place. “Your son was down low enough that most of the smoke was above him. He had very little inhalation, no-”

Whit shook his head, feeling as though he was having a hard time understanding. “Smoke? What are- what do you mean, smoke?”

Nurse Blanchard gave him a sympathetic look, like there was something she wasn’t telling him. “I’ll bring your son in. Give me just a few minutes.”

His confusion was only worsened by her steering around him. The nurse disappeared, and he was on the verge of pulling out the IV and wires they had attached to him when she at last wheeled in a little cart with a clear plastic hospital bassinet fixed atop it.

“Here we are!” The nurse rolled the bassinet right up to his bedside. “He’s been such a good baby for the people down in the nursery. They did a bit of fudging on this and that to keep him here. Didn’t want him to be separated from you. Not after everything.”

Still with no idea what she was talking about, he asked, “What do you mean, ‘after everything’?”

“I’m sure the doctor will talk to you more about that when he comes in.” Nurse Blanchard gave him another of those painfully sympathetic looks. She scooped Bay out of the bassinet and put him in his father’s arms. “There we go. That’s what he’s been missing.”

His son was safe and with him, and anything else seemed beside that point right now. Whit held him close, relieved beyond words.

The nurse pointed out a button on the inside of the bed’s rail. “Press this if you need me. I’ll be back in a while.”

He unwrapped Bay from the the blue polka dot nursery blanket and checked him all over to make certain the baby was okay. Everything _was_ all right, it seemed.

“Look at all this,” he whispered, taking his son’s hands on his fingers and bouncing them gently. Bay gave a soft grunt and smacked his lips. “What’d we do to rate this place instead of county?”

Bay pulled his feet in close and Whit caught sight of the hospital tag around the baby’s ankle. He’d been more interested in counting fingers and toes than looking at the anklet. All he could see were the letters ‘ench.’ Turning the bit of plastic to get a better look, he found the name printed on the slip of paper inside. _‘Baby Scarlet-French.’_

Whit blinked. The hospital hadn’t mixed up Bay and Neal. He knew his own child. But then, why in heaven was their last name on his son’s tag?

“Something’s going on, isn’t it?” he said to Bay and reached for the call button, pressing it. 

As he moved to re-wrap Bay in the blanket, he looked at his own ID bracelet. _‘William Scarlet-French.’_ He still gaped at it when someone walked in.

“Hello!” the doctor greeted, baring a toothy smile as he flipped through a chart, hardly looking up. “Dr. Whale. I’ve been looking after you. Well, the nurses have been looking after you. I’ve been checking in.”

Nurse Blanchard and another nurse with blonde hair followed the doctor in, both oddly somber.

“There’s been some sort of mistake,” Whit told them.

Dr. Whale laughed. “Wouldn’t even be the first today. Tell me, do you remember the fire?”

Whit’s jaw dropped. _“Fire?”_

With the word, something came back. Smoke and heat, choking, trying to get himself out of the bed to get to Bay and not being able to. Breaking glass and someone in hulking safety gear climbing in through the window.

He petted Bay’s sparse brown curls. “I remember,” he murmured. God, they could have died. They almost had. “I remember a fireman. I think.”

“Captain Nolan,” said Nurse Blanchard, an entirely different smile on her face. “He’s the one who brought you and your son out.”

“Excellent.” The doctor scribbled on the chart. “You’ve been here for four days, in and out of consciousness.”

Whit tried to wrap his mind around not remembering more. “Here? Where is here?”

“Ah. You’re at Yale New Haven Hospital.” Dr. Whale snapped the chart closed and handed it off, stepping closer to the bed. “William, your wife-”

“No. No, no.” Whit shook his head. “There was a man. He-”

“The fireman?” Nurse Blanchard asked.

“No, another man with a baby about the same age as my son. Where is he?” Whit asked. Lacey and Will would clear up the entire confused mess.

Dr. Whale traded a look with the nurses. “You and your son are the only survivors from your floor of the hotel.”

Whit’s hands shook. The shaking spread until he felt as though his bones should rattle. With only the trembling as warning, he broke down crying, unable to stop it. The only survivors. Lacey, Will, their baby. The kindness they’d shown him, and they were gone? This is how they were repaid?

Dr. Whale misinterpreted his reaction. “I’m sorry, William, about your wife. I know it’s little consolation, but she didn’t suffer.”

“Stop! Stop calling me that!” Whit made an attempt to finish swaddling Bay again, his hands fumbling with the blanket. “This- this isn’t right. This can’t be right. I’m not-”

“Nurse Blanchard,” the doctor said, gesturing to him.

She took a syringe from her pocket and stepped over to the bedside

Whit leaned away from her. “What are you doing?” 

Nurse Blanchard reached for his IV line. The blonde nurse reached for Bay at the same time, whisking him away from Whit’s lap while he was distracted.

“It’s only something to help you calm down,” Nurse Blanchard told him quietly.

He darted a look between the blonde nurse, who placed Bay back into the bassinet, and Nurse Blanchard, who was pushing the syringe plunger.

“I don’t need to calm down! I need to fix this!” he said desperately. The blonde nurse rolled the bassinet away and toward the door. “Wait, please wait, don’t take him!”

Whit felt himself fading. His head went light and floaty, and the bed began swallowing him up.

Nurse Blanchard gave him a strange smile and pulled the blanket over him. “Everything will be okay, sir.”


	4. Chapter 4

Nurse Boyd, the blonde woman on the day shift, at last brought in the plastic bag holding his belongings. First thing, he looked for his mother’s ring. Panic began closing around his insides. It wasn’t in the pocket where he remembered placing it.

When she saw him searching, she held it out to him, handkerchief and all. “I found it when I took your things to have them cleaned. Everything was all smoky.”

“Thank you,” he said, barely keeping himself from snatching it out of her hand

The nurse smiled and left. At least having the ring meant they still had a way to survive for a little while. 

Whit sniffed the pullover Will had loaned him. It still smelled like smoke and burning, but there was nothing to be done about it. Not if washing it hadn’t helped.

“Better than nothing, isn’t it?” he said in Bay’s direction. Though it wasn’t as if he could put his son inside the pullover. Besides being awkward, it wasn’t warm enough, and he worried the smell would choke the baby. “We’ll have to manage a coat somehow.”

Each morning since he’d wakened properly, Nurse Blanchard made sure to bring his son in early. The nurses seemed to favor Bay. Every day, he came in with some new small thing. Socks, a pacifier. Today he gummed at the end of a mitten. 

It was quickly that Whit learned to keep quiet about what happened. They wouldn’t listen, and it had only gotten him another round of sedative on his second attempt. The authorities would put it together sooner or later. In the meantime, he and Bay were being discharged and he had to figure out where to go.

“Almost ready?” Nurse Blanchard asked from the doorway.

He looked at Bay and at the pair of almost empty drawstring bags laying on the hospital bed. “Is it possible I might get a few baby supplies for the trip?” he asked, hating that he had to.

“I can get you a new mommy box?” she suggested. “It has diapers, formula, a couple of bottles, some other things. The box has a pad to place in the bottom so baby can sleep safely in it. I’ll just get you one. Hold on.”

Whit had only a moment to wonder whether she suspected something before the phone rang. Yet again. It had been ringing every half hour or so all morning, and he was afraid to answer. His fear was more associated with who would be on the other end. On the table next to the phone sat an enormous arrangement of irises and white roses with a card. _‘To our dear William.’_ Their delivery the previous evening had given his conscience a good twinge.

Nurse Blanchard returned with a box made of heavy, laminated cardboard, printed all over with fireflies. It was just a bit smaller than the plastic bassinet Bay had been staying in when out of his father’s sight.

“Aren’t you going to answer?” she asked, glancing at the telephone. “Your family has been trying to get in touch with you.”

The words ‘your family’ gave him a strange flutter in his chest. Even the feeling didn’t belong to him, though, he supposed. “Oh. I, ah- I’m on my way now.”

She reached for the phone. “It can’t hurt to let them know that.”

Whit turned, grabbing the handset before she could, not wanting her to make things worse. “Hello?”

Nurse Blanchard gave him a satisfied smile. Job done, she stepped out of the room.

“Hello! Oh, William, I’ve been trying to reach you for so long!” The woman’s voice was kind and sweet, and it made him feel all the worse. 

“I’m sorry,” he began, about to launch himself into an attempt at explaining once more. He hoped to have more luck with a family member. “I don’t know-”

She cut in before he could finish his sentence. “Of course not, dear. I apologize. I should have led with that, shouldn’t I? I’m Lacey’s mother, Colette.”

Whit sat down on the side of the bed, his throat feeling tight. He croaked out another, “I’m so sorry…”

“I wanted to be there, dear,” she told him, sounding sincere. “My doctor declared me unfit for travel. I’d have been there from the first day if I weren’t practically under house arrest.”

“Mrs…” He wasn’t certain what to call her. Lacey’s last name was the French half of Scarlet-French, wasn’t it? Suddenly he couldn’t be sure. 

“Please call me Colette,” she said. “Mrs. French was _my_ mother-in-law.”

“Oh. C- Colette. I don’t think-”

“I know I’ll be seeing you in person in only a matter of hours, but I wanted to say something,” Colette began, emotion shaking in her words. “Lacey mentioned that you haven’t any family. I want you to consider the French house your home now. _We’re_ your family, dear.”

Tears filled his eyes. He leaned his face into his hand. Lacey’s mother was being so kind. But she thought he was actually her daughter’s husband.

He had to swallow hard a couple of times before he could trust his own voice. “Thank you, but-”

“No buts. Let me be your mother-in-law. Don’t argue,” she told him good naturedly. “Besides, you have my grandson there, and it’s my privilege to bring you both here.”

Whit startled upright. “Bring us there?”

“Why, yes. What did you think, that I would set you adrift? I’ve sent a car for you. It should be there soon, if not already.”

“Oh, God, you don’t have to do that.”

“Nonsense. It’s all arranged. You’ll be here by this afternoon.” Something weary began to come through in Colette’s voice. “We’ll see you soon, William.”

“No-no-no,” he said quickly, but she’d already hung up. Holding the handset out in front of him, he stared at it as though he might find some explanation in it.

Sneaking out of his hospital room proved rather difficult, complicated with Bay cradled against him in one arm and the box of supplies under the other. He couldn’t stay to be discharged, though. Or, God forbid, be found and fetched out to Colette French.

“William Scarlet-French?” someone asked as soon as he stepped into the hallway.

“What?” Whit squawked in shock, turning to find a man in a crisp black suit and chauffer’s cap quite obviously addressing him.

The man regarded him with keen blue-gray eyes for a moment before tilting his head to read the hospital bracelet that Whit still wore.

“Yes, that would be you. I was told you might be a little… frazzled.” The man flicked a quick gaze up and down him. “You look like you’ve been through hell. Guess you have, close enough. Here, let me,” he said, reaching out to take the cardboard box.

Whit took a half step back. “I can carry it. You don’t have to.”

The suited man offered a more or less gentle smile before placing an open hand on his chest. “Jefferson Milliner. Mrs. French calls me Jefferson, so everyone else tends to do the same. I’m the family’s butler, driver when need be, and today I’ve been entrusted with driving you.”

“Nice to meet you,” Whit said, still not prepared to hand anything over to him.

Jefferson sniffed the air, then sniffed more in Whit’s direction. “That’s what you were wearing when… That won’t do. How inconsiderate.”

“They washed the clothes.” He felt as if he should apologize, though the smell of his pullover wasn’t what he needed to apologize for.

“Smoke tends to cling. You must _really_ know what you’re doing to get it out.” Jefferson turned, casting around. “Ah. Nurse? Might I bother you for a pair of clean scrubs?”

Nurse Blanchard put down her cup of yogurt. “Of course! Just a sec,” she said, and she disappeared into a room behind the front desk, quickly returning with a pair of plain green scrubs.

Taking them, Jefferson ushered him with shooing hands back into the hospital room. “Let me have these,” he said, first taking the box and setting it on the bed, then offering to hold the baby. When Whit proved reluctant to hand Bay over, he didn’t demand. Instead, he asked, “Would you prefer a nurse come in to watch him?”

Whit hesitated. Finally, he gave a nod.

Jefferson stepped into the hallway again. “Nurse?”

By the time Whit finished changing, the flowers and box of baby things were moved from the room, but Nurse Boyd and Jefferson remained with Bay. Jefferson hovered over the plastic bassinet, making ridiculous faces. He was absolutely unapologetic when he noticed Whit watching.

“Better,” Jefferson deemed. “Come on, then, let’s get you home.”

Taking the drawstring bag that now held smoky and borrowed clothes, Jefferson waited for Whit to gather his son before gesturing him along. Whit went. What _else_ was he going to do? These people, they were offering shelter. They were offering _family._ Even if it did feel like some manner of theft, he found himself wanting to go with it.

It was for Bay’s sake, he told himself. Bay needed somewhere warm and safe. Where he would have food and clothing.

The chauffer - butler? - led him down to a vehicle parked very near the hospital entrance - a great, sleek, navy blue Mercedes-Benz with its cargo area open and already occupied with the flowers and box from his hospital room. Jefferson placed the bag in and closed the hatch before going around to open one of the back passenger doors. 

What looked to be a very expensive carseat was already secured inside. They’d really prepared for coming to fetch him and Bay.

Jefferson held his arms out for the baby and waited patiently when Whit once more hesitated. Figuring there wasn’t much the other man could do by way of taking off with his son right there with an open car, he transferred the baby over. Jefferson took Bay with the utmost care, half climbing in to get him into the carseat without jostling him around too much, and buckled the baby in.

“Your turn,” Jefferson said as he stood beside the door again. “Though I expect you can put on your own safety belt?”

Whit wasn’t in the mood for banter. “I need to explain something.”

“I don’t need an explanation for anything. I’m the butler. I buttle.” Jefferson grinned. “My job right now, Mr. French, is to get you home as quickly as I safely can, as per my orders from the lady of the house.”

He may as well explain to Lacey’s own mother. Whit figured he owed the poor woman that much. He got into the car, receiving an expectant look from Jefferson until he’d applied his seatbelt. The butler nodded with satisfaction when he was buckled in next to Bay, and they were on the road away from the hospital.

It took a while to get away from swaths of concrete and glass, but he almost felt as though he could breathe easier when they did. The world had been enveloped in a fireworks display of orange, yellow, red leaves. Whit felt a hundred years away from the crush and anxiety of the city. Feeling the cold cutting right through the thin scrubs, he reached over to tuck Bay’s blankets more closely around him. A rush of warm air streamed into the back of the car, and he realized Jefferson had turned on the heater. 

“Everything all right back there, Mr. French?” Jefferson asked.

“Everything’s fine.” Whit looked at him in the rear-view mirror. “You know that’s not the way it goes, right? I wouldn’t be Mr. French.”

“If I know Miss Lacey,” the butler said with a smile, “and I certainly do, that is indeed the way it goes.”

Whit tried to brush off the fluster that Jefferson’s teasing brought out. He’d gone along with everything else up to this point. He may as well go along with this, too. A bit along the way, it occurred to him that Jefferson had to _ask_ whether he was William. Had Lacey never sent them a photo?

He had to work himself up to asking, “Am I what you expected?”

Jefferson hummed thoughtfully. “Honestly, no. Miss Lacey has always gone a bit taller with her gentlemen friends. A bit muscular. A bit… younger.”

“She never sent pictures? Videos?” Whit had a hard time imagining it. Didn’t everyone send selfies to friends and family, assuming they had them?

“Oh, you know her. She never could be bothered recording life when she could be living it,” Jefferson said. “We’re lucky to have gotten the postcards we got, I suppose.”

They had no pictures of William. And William had no family. Whit tried very hard not to consider how easy that would make it to simply go along with their assumptions. He couldn’t do that.

The drive went on and on, and he became glad he’d fed and changed Bay before leaving the hospital. He recalled Lacey mentioning that they were still quite a way from home. Resting a hand over on his son in the carseat, he leaned his head back and closed his eyes. 

“Mr. French?” Jefferson said, waking him gently. “We’re getting close.”

Whit sat up where he’d slid down in his sleep. A couple of hours had gotten away from him. He was just getting his head clear when he saw the sign.

‘Welcome to Storybrooke.’

The town itself was absolutely idyllic. If he hadn’t been suddenly half sick with nerves, he’d have wondered whether he was still sleeping. It looked like the kind of place you only saw in movies.

They drove all the way through town and out onto the forest road out the other side to get to the French house. The house, which turned out to be an expansive gated estate. Whit spent the entirety of the way up the shell drive with his mouth hanging open.

“Bay…” he said under his breath. “What have I gotten us into?”


	5. Chapter 5

“I’m not sure this is right…” Whit felt smaller by the second as he was led into the mansion. “Maybe if you’d ask Mrs.- er- Colette if I could talk to her for a few minutes?”

“Don’t you worry. Mrs. French will want to speak with you.” Jefferson grinned back at him.

He held Bay close. Jefferson carried the baby supply box, asking the maid who met them at the door to have everything else in the car brought in.

Whit gaped around at the entryway, looking up at the paintings, the chandelier, the cathedral ceiling. “Good Lord.”

His staring was interrupted. “Hello, William.”

He turned to see a small statured woman coming slowly down the staircase. She wore a set of undoubtedly expensive pajamas and a pretty silk robe in the same lavender over them, open and trailing on the stair after her like a train. Her dark hair, shot through with strands of gray, was arranged in a rather intricate up-do in contrast to her clothing. He could see Lacey’s resemblance in her. This had to be Colette.

 _Liar, liar, liar,_ a sharp voice in his head accused. Whit felt like throwing up. He was lying to these people in the worst way.

“There’s been an accident,” he began as she approached him, trying to work up enough courage to tell her the truth.

The expression on Colette’s face was both profoundly sad and tired. “I know, dear.”

He shook his head. “No, it’s something altogether different. I’m so sorry, I’m not-”

“You’ve lost your wife. I lost my daughter. I know it’s different,” she said softly, reaching out to lay a hand on his arm.

Whit’s resolve to do the right thing shook and then fell apart completely. Everything was so _wrong._ How had it all gotten so damn twisted up?

Colette gazed longingly at Bay - so much that he couldn’t help offering, “Would you like to hold him?”

“Oh, yes,” she whispered, smiling. “Please. It’s been so long since I’ve held a little one.”

He placed his sleeping son in her arms. Bay scrunched his nose up and made a small sound but didn’t open his eyes, content with being held. 

And Colette appeared in love with the baby already. She ran a hand over his hair. “What is his name?”

“Lacey didn’t tell you?” Whit asked, taken aback. The baby had been somewhere around a month old, and they hadn’t told her his _name?_

“It was a surprise, she said. She meant to tell us when you all arrived. You know our Lacey and her quirky ideas.” Colette stroked a fingertip across Bay’s cheek and he opened his mouth. “Oh, he looks so much like her,” she cooed down at the baby.

The name leapt right to his tongue. “Neal Emeric.”

She cleared her throat, tears brimming in her eyes. “Neal was my father’s name. Emeric was her father’s middle,” Colette explained, and she began to cry in earnest, tears dropping onto Bay’s blanket.

Whit’s heart ached for her, for the entire family that had been. The lies he was telling, they were stacking up, and he knew the right thing to do was just _tell them_ what had happened. It would hurt everyone, but it would hurt less if he were honest now, wouldn’t it? Or would he only be taking away what she thought she had left?

Hearing footsteps on the stairs, he looked up, and there he found a heart-stoppingly familiar face.

“We need to go,” Whit gasped, slipping his hands in to take his son from Colette’s arms. “I’m sorry, we- we need-”

Her expression creased into concern. “William? What’s the matter?”

It was too much, being there in their house. He’d let it go too far. They would call the police, he would be thrown in jail, Bay would be sent into foster care and he would never see his son again. His head swam, and he thought for a moment that he would pass out.

Colette frowned at him. She looked back to the stairs, to the young woman _who looked exactly like Lacey,_ and looked to him again.

“William, did Lacey not tell you that her sister is her twin?” Colette asked, reaching out for his arm.

“Sh- she-” Whit stared. All he could do was shake his head.

“What a terrible shock that must be!” She squeezed her hand over top of Whit’s forearm. “I’m sorry, dear. This is Belle.”

Belle. Belle, who made him feel as if he were seeing a ghost. She so clearly wasn’t her sister, though, when he calmed enough to see. Her dark auburn hair hung in a neat braid over her shoulder. She had the same great, clear blue eyes, but they had a different spark to them. And the woman in front of him, hers were rimmed in red. She’d obviously been crying. Grieving. She held a handkerchief tightly in one hand.

He was barging in on a grieving family. That’s what sort of awful person he was.

The woman who looked like Lacey sniffled. “Will?” she asked as she reached the bottom of the staircase, and the tone of her voice was so different that it managed to break the illusion. “You’re Will?”

Against his better judgment screaming at him, Whit nodded.

“I’m so glad to finally meet you,” Belle said, her smile watery. She went up on her toes to wrap her arms around his neck, being careful not to squish the baby. Stepping back, she dabbed at her nose with the handkerchief before stuffing it into a pocket in her dress. “I just wish it could have been under happier circumstances.”

Not sure what else to do, Whit adjusted Bay in his arms and asked the same of her that he did of Colette when confronted with her. “Would you like to hold him?”

“Oh, I…” She shook her head a little, her chin trembling.

“Go on, darling. Hold your nephew,” her mother encouraged. Colette told her proudly, “They named him Neal.”

Belle let Whit place the baby in her arms. She sniffled again, swaying the tiniest bit. Bay grumbled a little and batted his eyes up at her.

“He’s precious. Hi, Neal. Hi…” she said quietly, touching the baby’s hair. “He looks like her. Has her chin.”

Whit said nothing. It couldn’t hurt for her to see reflected whatever she wanted to see. After a few more minutes, she returned his son to him, excusing herself a bit tearfully. 

“I’m glad you’re here with us,” she told Whit again before disappearing upstairs.

Colette looked to Jefferson. “Where are his bags?”

“There were none.” Jefferson shook his head. “Only a personal belongings bag from the hospital with the clothing he was rescued in.”

“I don’t have anything.” They both looked to him, and Whit felt himself turn pink. “Everything was at the hotel.” That much was true, at least.

Tutting, Colette reached out to pat his arm. “All right. Well. We can remedy that easily enough. Why don’t you come with me? You need somewhere to rest, and I don’t believe the foyer is particularly comfortable in that respect.”

She turned, resting a hand on the banister, and headed back up the stairs. Having no idea what else to do, he followed.

Whit expected to be led to a bedroom. When Colette stopped and opened a door, however, what he found was far more. Aside from a full bedroom set, there was a sitting room arranged in the middle space and a small nursery set up through a wide archway at the far end. A fancy wooden cradle sat to one side of the bed.

“I know it isn’t ideal,” Colette began. “A separate nursery will be needed, particularly as little Neal gets bigger. But I thought these rooms would do for now?”

Bay snuffled against his shoulder, and he rubbed his son’s back. “No, it’s perfect. I’d rather have him nearby. I think the hospital is the first time I’ve slept without him in the same room since he was born.” 

“One moment,” she said before stepping out of the room.

Whit looked around. He peeked into the bathroom, into the empty walk-in closet. The entire situation got more and more surreal. He was looking into nightstand drawers when Colette returned, making him feel a bit caught.

“I put these together when Lacey told us that you were all coming back.” She held a stack of identical blue photo albums in her hands. Looking down at them, she pressed her lips into a line, and he could see more how her daughters resembled her. “I thought to sit you both down and make an evening of going through old photographs.”

She set the albums on the dresser and rested a hand on top. “You have a look at them when you feel up to it, all right?” she told him with an encouraging nod. “I can’t do it myself just yet.”

Whit looked at the stack of them. His heart sank, but he nodded to her in return. “I will.”

With a deep sigh, Colette looked to the baby. She raised her fingertips to her lips. “I feel as though I’ve hardly stopped crying since the call came,” she said, and he wasn’t sure whether she really said it to him or to the room. “I begin to wonder if it’s possible to run out of tears.”

She went to him, resting one hand on his arm that supported Bay, and cradled the other over the baby’s head. “I’m so glad you’ve come to stay with us.” With a kiss to Bay’s forehead, she patted Whit’s arm again and turned to go. “Rest a while, dear. Make yourself comfortable. Make yourself _at home._ Someone will be up to let you know when dinner is ready.”

Whit moved enough to sit on the corner of the bed, feeling as if he couldn’t make it farther. His son cooed up at him. “I don’t know what to do,” he confessed to Bay, putting his index finger in the way of one little hand so that it would grab hold.

He owed it to his son to be somewhere safe, where they could eat and stay warm. And these people wanted him here. Well. They wanted Will and Neal. He frowned, no closer to knowing what to do about the mess he had gotten himself into. For now, though, they would stay. They had nowhere else to go.


	6. Chapter 6

“He just doesn’t seem Lacey’s type at all.” Belle took a bottle of water from the glass mini fridge under the sitting room wet bar. “He’s shy. He’s… soft.” She looked to her mother. “He doesn’t look like he would get into a bar fight.”

Colette gave her an admonishing look. “That’s Lacey’s widower you’re talking about.”

Belle poured water into a small glass, dropped a couple of ice cubes in, and shook two aspirin from the bottle that sat on the counter beside the bitters. “I’m not saying there’s anything wrong with him. Not at all. He just- well, can you think of a single boy she dated that’s anything like Will?”

“The person we decide to marry isn’t always like people we date for fun, darling,” her mother said.

She crossed back to the armchair where Colette held court. “I suppose,” she replied, placing the pills in her mother’s palm. Belle slid the glass of cognac from her mother’s hand and replaced it with the water.

“My dinner now begins with a pill course,” Colette muttered with no small amount of annoyance.

Belle ignored her mother’s remark. “I can’t imagine her being as happy as she sounded on that call with this man. She sounded-”

“In love,” Colette finished for her. “You never know about love, Belle. It sneaks up on you.”

“So I’m told. Please take the aspirin, Mama,” she nudged. “Dinner is ready, Father Anton is on his way and I’m sure Will is going to be down soon.”

With a resigned huff, Colette swallowed the two tablets.

“Thank you.” Belle leaned to kiss her mother’s cheek. “Okay, I’m going in. Don’t forget you have to take the rest a few minutes before you eat. You should come in, make sure you have time.”

Her mother smiled. “I’m right behind you, darling.”

She’d never minded being the first to the table. Family dinners weren’t a frequent occurrence in the French household when she was young, and often even when they planned one, it took some doing to get everyone’s backsides in seats. Belle had done a great deal of waiting for dinner while her parents and sister straggled in, and even more eating alone or in the kitchen when excuses were made. 

“William is a fine young man,” Colette said as she took her place at the head of the table, Jefferson pulling out her chair. “Don’t prejudge him.”

Belle raised her eyebrows innocently. “I’m not. And I’m not saying he isn’t.” 

As soon as her mother set down her water glass, Belle took it. Giving it a passing sniff to confirm her suspicion that her mother had replaced the water with something stronger when she’d left the room, she handed it off to Jefferson.

“I’m sure he’s not some terrible person. He seems perfectly nice,” she went on. “Maybe he’s wonderful. Maybe he’s the entire reason Lacey settled down and decided to come home. But we hadn’t heard from her in any meaningful way in almost a _year_ before she called to say she was coming back with a husband and baby.”

Quietly, Colette pointed out, “That husband and baby are Lacey’s legacy. We owe it to her to take care of them.”

“Mama, if she were here, you’d be telling her precisely how disappointed you are with her for keeping us in the dark.”

“That’s ridiculous.”

Belle gave her mother a knowing glance. “I mean, I’m not saying we should ask him to leave. I’m _glad_ he’s here.” She looked at the fat goblet of ice water at her setting, watching a rivulet of condensation fall. “And I’m glad the baby is here.”

Reaching over, Colette laid a hand over her daughter’s. “I miss her, too, Belle.”

“I’ve been missing her for years,” Belle murmured, feeling tears flood her eyes again. “It isn’t fair. She was coming home. She was _so close_ to coming home.”

“I know,” her mother whispered to her, squeezing her hand.

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Whit followed a dark haired maid down hallways and a set of rear stairs, through a fancy receiving area. It was lucky he’d run into her in a hallway - he’d have called it unfamiliar, but they were _all_ unfamiliar. He had gotten himself so lost, he wasn’t sure he could have made it to the dining room on his own. 

“I’m sorry to have bothered you,” he apologized to the maid, patting Bay’s back to soothe him when he began to fuss.

He wondered if Bay could still smell smoke in the pullover he wore. Jefferson had his clothing - no, _Will’s_ clothing - cleaned more thoroughly and brought it along when he came up to let Whit know that dinner would be served soon. He couldn’t smell anything in them, himself, but maybe his son could. 

“It’s no trouble at all, sir,” the maid said.

Whit cringed. “No, no, don’t do that. Don’t call me ‘sir,’ please.”

She simply smiled in reply to his request.

Jefferson met them as they stepped through into yet another hallway. “I was just about to send out a search party.”

“Sorry,” Whit said. “The house-”

“Just shy of being set free in a labyrinth?” Jefferson grinned.

“Only just.”

“Come on, then. Everyone is waiting.”

Whit felt his entire thought process stumble. “Everyone?”

“Mrs. French, Miss Belle, the father,” Jefferson said, gesturing him along.

“Father. I wondered.” He hoped that Mr. French wasn’t the type of parent who hated their children’s significant others on principle. “I thought maybe he was too upset to come down?”

Jefferson cast a funny look back at him. “Father Anton. The family’s parish priest. Miss Lacey and Miss Belle’s father passed away quite a number of years ago, now.”

“Oh. That’s right. I’m sorry, I…” Whit trailed off, shaking his head. He’d made a bad assumption. He needed to be more careful. “I knew that.”

“That would be when Mrs. French’s health began to suffer. It happened not long after Miss Lacey flew the coop,” Jefferson told him more quietly. “First her husband, and now one of her children. Too much loss hurts the heart.”

Whit’s own heart sank. And when she found out that her son-in-law and grandson were dead, also, what would that do to her?

They made it to the dining room, where everyone else indeed already waited for him. Jefferson directed him to a chair at the end of the near side of the table, placing him right across from Belle. 

“I’m sorry, I delayed dinner, didn’t I?” Whit glanced around. “I got a bit lost.”

Once he’d been settled into the dining chair, the servers set into motion. The two maids - the one he saw when he arrived and the one who found him wandering - brought around trays. Yet again, not sure what to do, he watched and waited.

“Poor lad would have starved to death in the west wing if Lizzie hadn’t led him out,” Jefferson teased, giving him a wink before heading into the kitchen.

Whit felt his face go warm. He couldn’t depend on anyone else to lead him through the house every time he left the bedroom.

The priest smiled at him from across the table. “Don’t worry about it, son. I’ve been a regular guest in the French house for over twenty-five years, and it’s still not a sure thing I don’t get lost visiting the washroom.”

“William,” Colette said, “I’d like you to meet Father Anton. He’s an old family friend.”

“I- I’ve heard about you.” It wasn’t truly a lie, Whit rationalized. “It’s nice to meet you.”

“And it’s nice to meet you, William,” Father Anton said. “I was terribly sorry to hear about Lacey.”

Whit nodded. He quite purposefully shifted his attention to Bay, rubbing his son’s back. “Thank you.”

He could feel them looking at him. What was he meant to do? Stay quiet? Would they attribute that to grief? Say something? He probably needed to say something. If one was going to spin a lie, he supposed, one should spin it well.

With some quick thought, he went on. “Lacey was fond of you. She spoke of you often.”

The priest’s face pulled in amusement. “Oh? I’m touched. Especially as she hasn’t set foot in church since her first communion.”

“It made quite the impression, I guess,” Whit said, attempting to smooth over his estimation of how well Lacey knew the man.

“It made quite the impression on everyone present. Lacey set the altar on fire.” Father Anton chuckled.

Whit laughed in surprise, but before he could ask how, one of the maids came over and saved him from saying anything stupid. She brought a wooden frame with a small, tan baby seat attached.

“What? No,” he reacted to the seat being set down, leaning slightly away. “He doesn’t need to go anywhere. He’s fine with me.”

She leaned down, speaking softly. “I’m not taking him, sir. He’s only going just here.”

“Please don’t call me sir?” he said, equally quiet.

“You do need to be able to eat, dear. It’s all right,” Colette reassured him.

With some reluctance, Whit transferred Bay to the maid’s hands, and she carefully rested him in the seat. Bay was all set to cry until his father placed a hand on him, covering the baby’s chest and belly. He calmed almost instantly. When Whit looked up, Colette and Belle seemed a tad impressed.

He smiled over at his son. “He’s not too fond of being alone.”

“I can’t say that I blame him,” Colette said with a kind smile. “Are you using cloth or disposables for him?”

Whit stumbled over an answer, having no idea what to say. What did rich people use for their children? “Either is fine.”

Colette nodded. “There’s a diaper service in town, run through the laundromat. We’ll get it set up in the morning, if you like.”

He looked to Bay, who had never had more than plastic on his bum. “Aren’t the pins dangerous?”

“Most people don’t use pins now. There are nappies with snaps and velcro or plastic grips…” Belle looked from him to her mother and then to the priest, suddenly awkward.

Reaching over, Colette rested a hand atop her daughter’s on the table. “Belle did some looking around when she knew her nephew was coming. We’re well-researched and prepared for a baby in the house, I daresay.” 

Jefferson returned, standing next to Colette with a hand sized tray that held a glass of water and a small silver cup. She appeared none to happy to see it.

“Have I become that addled, or aren’t _you_ in _my_ employ, Jefferson?” she asked.

He smiled, looking pointedly to the silver cup and back to her. It was clear that he meant for her to take it. Insistently. Whit observed, wondering whose will might win out.

It took a few moments, during which the dining room remained in silence, but Colette plucked the cup from the tray without taking her eyes off the butler. She gave the pills inside a toss into her mouth. After clicking the cup back down, she went for the glass of white wine at her setting.

“No, no, _no,”_ Jefferson said, grabbing the glass and sweeping it out of her reach without so much as a slosh.

Following another moment of silent battle, Colette gave in. She took her pills with the water he’d brought to her.

“I am nearly sixty years old, Jefferson. I can judge how to take my own medication,” she said to his back as he went to leave the dining room.

Jefferson cast a distinctly sassy smile over his shoulder at her. “Apparently not.”

The dark haired maid who had found Whit in the hallways brought a platter around to his left. A pair of tongs lay at the edge, and he took them, picking up a chicken breast with some sort of seasoning encrusted over top. He _almost_ got to his plate with it. The piece of chicken fell, rolling down into his lap and leaving a trail all the way down.

Whit’s ears burned with embarrassment. “Sorry. I’m sorry. I- it slipped. I-”

“It’s all right. It’s perfectly natural to be rattled, dear,” Colette said gently. She looked to the maids. “Lizzie, Greta, please serve William’s plate tonight as you bring courses out.”

He stared down at his plate as one maid or the other placed food on it. Dinner looked delicious, but his appetite was nowhere to be found. 

“So, um. Will? You met my sister in Scotland?” Belle asked.

Well, that went some way toward explaining how they were so readily accepting him. 

“Yes?” Whit replied, not sure what she wanted him to say.

She met his eyes, and the need to hear something more was obvious. “Can you tell us about how you met?”

Colette cleared her throat, the look she gave her daughter clearly scolding.

He had to respond somehow. It was better to use what he knew. “We met in Glasgow. Out front of the Armadillo. She said it reminded her of the Sydney Opera House a bit.”

Belle sat forward. “How long did you know one another before you decided to propose?”

“Oh. A few weeks. It was love at first sight,” he said, hoping that it wasn’t a mistake on either count. “Had it in my head to marry her then. I just had to wait for her to catch up.”

Colette laughed, opening her napkin over her lap. “That’s our Lacey.”

The table went quiet. All Whit could hear were the sounds of silverware and eating. 

“Before she called to let us know she was coming home, we hadn’t heard from Lacey in months,” Belle told him. She sipped from her wine glass once, twice, before continuing. “It wasn’t terribly unusual. She left just after we graduated from college, on a wild hare to go backpacking through Europe. She didn’t even come home for our father’s funeral.”

Whit got the distinct impression that there was _far_ more there than Belle summarized so briefly. Something in the restrained tone of her voice lent to it.

“Contact was… sporadic and short,” Colette admitted.

Belle stirred and prodded at the serving of green beans on her plate. “Mama and I received postcards, sometimes two or three a month, sometimes every few months.”

“Until her call around the middle of the month, the last cards we received were one from Scotland eight months ago, telling us she’d met someone who joined her travels. I know now that would be you.” Colette smiled at him again, as though she wanted him to know that she wasn’t angry. “There was one from Wales, one from France, and another from Scotland. She didn’t tell us she’d gotten married and had a baby until the unprecedented phone call.”

Whit closed his mouth with a click of teeth when he realized how his jaw had fallen open. “I’m so sorry,” he said, frowning down at his own plate. “I had no idea she hadn’t told you about the baby.”

“She was a bit like that,” Belle told him. “Please, don’t mistake me. I love Lacey. Probably more than anything else in the world. But she had a hard time taking others’ feelings into account.”

“She liked to keep things as surprises, that’s all. And it isn’t as though quick marriages don’t run in the family,” Colette said quite diplomatically. Her smile had a sad tinge to it, though. She shook her head and had a bite of food. “Well, then. Where did the two of you get married?”

“Rome,” he answered off the top of his head. Then he wondered if he should have just said Paris. Perhaps Paris would have been a more generally romantic city.

Colette gave a soft hum of admiration. “Oh, that must have been beautiful!”

“It was.” With some hesitation, he smiled.

“Tell us about it?” Belle asked. “What was it like?”

Whit stammered over his attempt at a suitable answer. “I- it- well, ah. It was nice. Spur of the moment, but beautiful.” He cringed internally. He was going to have to do better than that for Lacey’s mother and sister. Thinking about what he’d hoped for before things had gone downhill between he and Milah, he stretched it out a bit further. “We got married at sunset. There was a little chapel we ran across with a minister who agreed to marry us without being members of the congregation. She bought some lilies and wore a blue lace dress she found in a boutique in town.”

Belle made a small sound. When he looked to her, she said, “That’s her all over.”

“We would have been there, had we known,” Colette told him, her expression wistful.

“But we understand that it was an impromptu thing,” Belle added with a shake of her head. “It probably didn’t even occur to Lacey we’d want to be there.”

The table went quiet. Whit felt as though he should say something. Whether that was unwise, time would tell.

“I didn’t-” he began, and everyone looked at him. He had to make himself go on. “I didn’t know her very long, compared to her family. She was kind, though. She helped people. She must have looked irresponsible and thoughtless sometimes, but we met because she helped me when no one else would.”

Colette smiled. Belle just stared at him for a moment. 

“We turned out differently. _So_ differently,” she said, the words coming out almost under her breath. “I haven’t understood anything about her since we were… ten? twelve? But I thought there’d be some point where we would converge again.” Belle looked down, sniffling, trying to hide that she cried.

Her reaction made Whit sorry for the way he spun his words. “I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to-”

“You didn’t. It’s fine.” She shook her head again. “I think you understood her more than I ever did. And there’s nothing wrong with that. After all, you were married to her. It’s good that you understood her so well.”

He _didn’t_ know Lacey. Not past the few hours he spent with her and Will. There was no way he could have understood her outside of the kindnesses she showed him, and certainly not more than Belle did. 

A panicky feeling began rising in his chest. He had to get away from them. Out of the dining room, at least, before he could melt down in from of them.

He pushed his chair back. “I’m sorry. I think B- Neal needs a nap, and I need-”

Whit’s mouth opened and closed, unable to find an excuse for himself, so he scooped his son up out of the little seat. He hurried away from the table, holding Bay against his shoulder, his cheek pressed to the top of the baby’s head.

“That poor man has been through hell,” he heard Colette say as he stopped to try and remember which way to go. “Oh… my apologies, Father.”

“No, no, Mrs. French. I believe if there’s a fair use of the phrase, that is one,” Father Anton replied.

Feeling a more painful pinch to the ever-present ache in his conscience, Whit made his way slowly upstairs.


	7. Chapter 7

“I’m not sure we need a baby shower.” Whit walked with Colette, keeping up with her as she made her way down the hallway from his room.

It seemed that Colette had scheduled the party for the Saturday after her daughter’s family was scheduled to arrive. But a shower meant people. People who would be told who he was. Who he was pretending to be.

“There’s nothing that we couldn’t buy for you, of course, but family friends will want to contribute in some way,” she coaxed. “You understand, dear.”

He hesitated at the bottom of the stairs. “I do. Yeah, I- I do.” 

“Besides, it’s not as though we can cancel with a room already filled with guests.” She smiled and gave his cheek a brief touch before continuing toward the larger room off the foyer he’d heard her refer to as the den.

If nothing else, at least he was able to wear something that he didn’t have to worry smelled like smoke. The day after he intruded upon the French household, a pair of boxes arrived. They’d been shipped ahead from where Lacey and Will were living in Scotland. One was filled with a man’s clothing and the other with a woman’s, both having baby items mixed into the disarray. 

Someone had placed the boxes in his room and he hadn’t felt right about rifling through the contents alone. Belle and Colette came up when he asked. It was painful, sitting by and watching them go through the boxes with such obvious grief. They took Lacey’s things, though he wasn’t sure where to. The rest, Jefferson swept it all away to have it cleaned, returning it to the closet and dresser a few hours later.

He tried to hide that the clothes were too big by rolling up the sleeves and trouser cuffs, hoping no one would notice if he did it neatly enough. It was only a matter of time before someone wondered why what were supposedly his own clothes didn’t fit him.

“Suppose we ought go in,” he whispered to Bay, who looked up at him with wide eyes. “This madness is all for you, aye?”

Whit put one foot ahead of the other until he stood outside of the enormous, open double doors. The den had been decorated mostly at the periphery with baby blue and teal streamers, strings of bunting, and clusters of balloons. Various lengths of the name ‘Neal Emeric Scarlet-French’ were emblazoned on many of the decorations. It was nice, he had to admit to himself. Some sort of light music drifted out. He was surprised to find that the music’s source was a small band set up in the far corner of the room. A fire crackled in the fireplace, making the room cozier. If this was what Colette could do on short notice, he couldn’t imagine what she might put together with real time.

He felt a little sick. The fact that there were so many people there, all of them strangers, didn’t help in the least. He lingered there near the doorway, swaying with Bay, procrastinating going in, and didn’t hear Belle behind him until she spoke.

“‘We’re just having a few people over to celebrate the baby!’” she said, imitating Colette’s classy lilt. 

Whit startled a bit, turning to see her. “A few…”

She gave him an apologetic smile. “Sorry about this whole thing. Mama really does love her parties.”

“No, it- it’s all right.” He shook his head. “A shower for the baby, for friends, it’s fine.”

Belle’s hand rested at his upper arm for only a second as she eased past him. “Come in when you’re ready. Trust me, they can entertain themselves for as long as necessary.”

He could handle a room full of people who wanted only to see and do nice things for his son. For a few hours, anyway. Taking a deep breath, he straightened Bay’s little cap and followed her in.

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As a general rule, Belle avoided mingling. Her habit had always been to find a friend or two at parties and to stick with them through the event, giving the appearance of socializing while minimizing her discomfort with small talk.

Her mother _loved_ putting on events. It was only because of their tragedy that they hadn’t hosted their annual American Thanksgiving dinner for fifty. With a new grandson to show off, however, Christmas was sure to be a spectacle. Belle felt just about equal measures of anticipation and dread over the holidays this year. Lacey hadn’t been home for Christmas in a decade, but there was a hollowness still looming.

She’d found Ariel and they were talking about the new musical ocean life app that Triton Corp was working on when she saw Will at last make his way into the den. For a split second, she considered excusing herself to go over, but one of her mother’s friends stopped him to baby talk a bit at Neal.

It was just as well someone else kept Will company. All at once, she found herself cornered by Gaston LeGume while talking to Ariel, who managed to get away using a clever excuse. Belle wished she’d been able to escape with such ease.

He was trying to flirt, but his attempts were rather offensive in both content and execution. Apparently noticing how she kept glancing over at Will, he sneered. “So _that’s_ the loser Lacey was going to bring home, huh?”

Belle pressed her lips together in irritation. “His name is William.”

“Huh.” Gaston eyed him again. “Not who I pictured for your sister.”

She was well aware. In all the time they’d known him, he’d always been after one or the other of them. Or both. 

Looking to Will, she watched as he reached to take an hors d’oeuvre from a passing waitress. He somehow managed to unbalance the tray. It slid on the waitress’ hand and, despite both their attempts, food and tray all crashed to the floor, causing everyone in the room to look toward the noise. Will turned a shade of red visible clear across the room. 

Belle covered her mouth with her hand, unable to help being embarrassed for him. She had to admit to herself, she still couldn’t really imagine Lacey throwing all in with him, either. Sweet and awkward were absolute light years apart from her sister’s type.

“You know, Belle,” Gaston said, taking a long swig from whatever he swirled around in his glass as they’d been ‘chatting.’ He sucked air between his teeth. “I was _shocked_ that you didn’t call me when you found out about Lacey, you needing a shoulder to cry on, and all.”

“We’re still trying to process it ourselves,” she told him, struggling to be civil.

“Yes, but I am an _excellent_ shoulder.” He leaned in toward her until she could smell the smoky scent of liquor on his breath.

She suddenly wished they’d made the shower a dry affair, even if it meant she couldn’t have a drink. Belle, her patience with him worn out, tried to flatten the expression of disgust she felt burning through.

“Excuse me,” she said. “I have something I need to do. Away from here.”

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Whit was descended upon by a group of ladies around Colette’s age almost as soon as he stepped into the room. One woman had come over to extend her sympathies when he first crossed the threshold, but it was his fumble at trying to take some sort of puffed pastry thing from a tray that grabbed their attention and drew over an entire group. They exclaimed at Bay, fussing over them both. It was a surprisingly warm energy to be at the center of, he discovered.

A couple of the women had begun to spar over childrearing methods when Colette appeared. “Ladies,” she greeted. “Thank you so much for coming.”

The exchange was fairly brief. Colette tempted them off toward the bartender with a promise of some champagne with an oddly long name, letting them know that it was about to be uncorked. They made a variety of intrigued sounds and went off in something of a flock.

Satisfied that he was no longer a point of entertainment, she touched Bay’s palm with a finger to make him grab on. “May I hold him?”

Whit nodded and let her take his son from his arms. She murmured nonsense at Bay, kissed his face, and left a little smudge of lipstick on his forehead. Bay seemed to enjoy it. He kicked his feet and wrinkled up his face in response.

“William, dear,” she said at length, “come with me.”

He walked with her away from the doors, not sure what to do with his hands now that his son wasn’t in them.

“I’m sure you would prefer to meet people your own age rather than being mobbed by my old friends,” she said lightly, smiling over at him. “You’ve a better chance of finding things in common, at the very least.”

Whit returned her smile, though he wasn’t so sure about that. She led him over near the big, roll-away bar that had been brought in for the hired tender, where three men stood talking and laughing. He wasn’t comfortable with the looks on their faces, and the feeling sank further when they turned as he and Colette approached.

“William, these are Isaac Heller, Owen Flynn, and Keith Nottingham. Their mothers are all long-time friends of mine,” she said, gesturing respectively to a heavily eyebrowed man with black hair, a smaller, ginger man, and another a good bit taller than either of the others, his mouth seeming set in a permanent sneer. “This is my son-in-law, William Scarlet-French. I trust you’ll make him feel welcome.”

All three men shook his hand in turn, more or less providing a greeting. It didn’t feel so much welcoming.

“I’m going to show off my grandson a bit,” Colette said after providing introductions, giving him a delicate wink. “There are a few people whom I need to make mad with jealousy.”

“So, uh, you took your wife’s name. That’s unusual, isn’t it?” Owen poked some hors d’oeuvre on a toothpick into his mouth, the wood scraping between his front teeth.

“Not that unusual,” Whit said, the answer leaping to mind in an odd feeling of defense. “I wanted to show her that we were in everything equally.” 

Isaac grinned, one wagging index finger gesturing up and down. “Interesting ensemble. Very… shabby chic.”

Not sure how to respond, Whit gave the man an uncomfortable smile. Invoking the fact he’d nearly died in a hotel fire and hadn’t had occasion to go shopping seemed a bit much. It wasn’t as though he could tell them that the box of clothing shipped ahead belonged to a dead man who was a few sizes larger than himself. And whose life he was in the middle of stealing. Like a bloody ghoul. So he said nothing, just pulling self-consciously at the buttondown he wore.

“Y’know, I’m surprised you could handle good old Lace long enough to make a baby,” Keith half slurred. “Girl was a wildcat.”

“Hey,” Owen snapped. “Too soon.”

Keith shrugged and chuckled into his drink. “Too soon for the truth?”

Pretty quickly, Whit decided that he would much rather have been left with Colette’s friends. They might have been a tad smothering in their attention, but they didn’t veil cruelty as humor. They didn’t make him feel like he needed a shower by sole virtue of being in proximity.

His mind veered to a tactic it employed when his father was on a screaming tear, looking for something to occupy itself outside of the words. The small, neat stones of the fireplace beyond the group of men caught his eye. Whit began counting them, row by row.

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Having acquired her nephew for herself, Belle enjoyed some uninterrupted cuddles. It was only when Neal began to fret that she went to find Will.

The last place she expected to find him was at the bar, but when she saw who he was with, it made sense. Somehow he’d ended up trapped with some of her mother’s friends’ awful sons. She recalled Lacey referring to the three of them as ‘walking, talking garbage cans’ a handful of times, and the description was terribly apt. Where one went, the other two crept along, and somehow they always ended up at the French house when one of their mothers were invited to an event.

“Here, I believe your son misses you,” she said as soon as she walked up to Will, depositing the baby in his arms. Neal quieted right away. “Walk with me?”

She could almost feel the relief in his posture when she asked him to get away from the group. Keith leered at her and she forced down a shudder, taking Will’s arm.

“You should eat something. We have the catering in place of lunch today,” she told him, guiding him off to one side of the den, where the furniture had been arranged more closely to allow for the number of people her mother invited. “Most of the drinks going around are boozy, but the flutes of pink fizzy drinks aren’t. And there are cold sodas at the bar. Which would you prefer?”

“Soda?” Will said. He looked more sad and lost than usual, and she would have to have a talk with her mother about the kind of men her friends’ sons tended to be. 

Belle gave him a gentle nudge toward the loveseat before going to get a drink for him. The spot was mostly out of the way, but the catering company’s servers crossed there in their pattern around the room. She sat beside him, urging him to try this and that as hors d’oeuvres came by, and he began looking a little less peaked after a while. Without being asked, Jefferson brought around a burp cloth and a warmed bottle for Neal. 

Seeming surprised but grateful, Will took them. “Thank you, Jefferson,” he said with a slightly lopsided smile.

“Not at all,” the butler replied with a nod of his head. He took up a station nearby and looked to Belle. “Is Her Majesty taking it slowly today?”

Belle snorted, giving him a sidelong look that said it all.

Jefferson pulled a bit of a face. “Did she take her medicine after I left it?”

“I practically had to sit on her to get her to take them, but yeah. Finally.” Her mother’s wide stubborn streak meant that the resistance was probably token, in response to being bossed around by doctors, family, and staff, all. That made it no less frustrating.

She looked to Will and her nephew again and smiled. The baby gave contented little kicks of his feet, one hand making grasping motions against the front of his father’s shirt. Belle felt the strangest wave of envy. When Neal finished his bottle, Will turned the baby over on his lap and went through a now familiar pattern of gentle, rhythmic pats until she heard a small burp come up.

Belle reached over to stroke a finger across the back of her nephew’s hand. “Jefferson, would you tell Mama we should start on the whole presents thing?”

“She’ll be pleased.” He took the bottle and cloth when Will offered them back. “It’ll save her from biting Ms. De Vil’s nose off.”

Jefferson walked away and Belle scanned the room for her mother, indeed talking with Ella De Vil. She could see her mother’s annoyance growing. It looked as though Jefferson got there just in time.

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Whit went where Belle directed him. He ended up sitting in the middle of a sofa placed just across from a long table filled with extravagantly wrapped gifts, and she stepped aside for a few moments with her mother.

It seemed that Belle explained something rather vehemently. At the same time, they glanced across the room. Colette frowned, then nodded, kissed her daughter’s cheek, and nodded again.

When Belle returned, she sat to one side of him, and Colette came over to sit on the other. She held her arms open for the baby once more. 

“You’ll need both hands to open presents,” Colette pointed out as he shifted Bay around to transfer him to her again.

Jefferson began the slow process of ferrying packages over from the gift table one after another, watching with strong judgment as they were opened. Whit tried to judge less obviously, but there were some… interesting presents. Some of these people definitely subverted the assumption that a baby shower was meant to provide _helpful_ things.

It went from odd to worse. In one enormous, flat white box, buried in a cloud of tissue paper, someone had presented him a certificate declaring that they had adopted an entire pod of whales in Neal’s name. There was a sterling silver baby rattle drowning in a bag full of blue and white confetti. Wrapped in swaths of coppery fabric, someone gave them an antique rocking horse, its rockers filled in with gold filigree. A fancy, greenish-blue box contained a sterling silver coin bank in the shape of a tin can.

Whit stared at the bank for a full minute, dumbfounded. It took him that long to muster a, “Thank you.”

After opening a lavishly ribboned box holding a silver plated baby flatware set, he heard someone nearby mutter, “Plated. Not sterling. How _cheap,”_ and Whit understood the sentiment of ‘eat the rich’ that was going around.

So little of what they received actually seemed useful. There was the occasional attempt at a half-sensible thing, though even those were made almost useless by the extravagance of them. A set of tiny pullovers made of cashmere. A silk bib embroidered with Neal’s full name. Crib bedding of 2000 thread count. He was left with an overwhelming sense of bewilderment. Like biting into a beautiful apple and finding wax.

When, thankfully, all of the presents had been opened and people were milling around to have a closer look at the things they’d clearly bought in order to flaunt them at one another, Whit took his son and got up with the excuse of changing Bay’s diaper. Bay hadn’t fussed, but he needed to get away from the party. For a few minutes, at least.

He made his way toward the door, and Keith remarked with a laugh as he passed, “Get a 24 karat gold breast pump in your mommy haul there?”

Whit, fed up past frustration, snapped quietly, “Fuck off.”

He hadn’t realized Colette was right behind him - and from Keith’s expression, he hadn’t, either - until she agreed. “You heard my son-in-law. Fuck off.”

The sentiment coming out in her upper class tone gave him something of a shock. It seemed to accomplish the silence in Keith it was meant to, however. She followed Whit upstairs and into his room, across to the nursery. He took Bay over and laid him down on the changing table. 

“I’m sorry about dropping you in with those men,” she apologized. “I didn’t realize they were so uncouth until Belle explained to me why she avoids them. I thought she simply didn’t wish to encourage male attentions.”

“I’m a joke. Everyone down there looks at me like I’m… entertainment,” he murmured, folding the wet diaper around itself and setting it aside. He took the clean one that Colette held out to him.

She laid a hand on his shoulder. “William, why do you care what they think?”

_William._ He cringed.

“I don’t belong here.” Forget not being his world. This wasn’t even his universe. “And everyone knows it.”

“You’re my son-in-law. You belong,” she told him sternly, as though saying the words could make it true. 

Whit took the stretchy plastic device that Jefferson had presented him with a package of along with a box of diapers from the laundromat. He attached it at three points and put the rest of Bay’s clothes back on.

“That’s nice of you, but no. I don’t. I can’t.” He shook his head. “Look at me.”

“I see you,” Colette said.

He settled Bay against his shoulder and took the diaper to the bathroom hamper. “You can’t honestly claim anything about me belongs here.”

She waited until he’d finished and his attention turned to her. “Perhaps you need new clothes. The styles here are different. Perhaps your hair needs a trim?” 

Whit snuggled Bay to him, doing his best to ignore the misery that swelled behind his ribs.

“Forgive me,” Colette said quickly. “I never had a son to harass about his appearance.”

He looked up and the expression on her face was teasing. Whit pushed a smile through his fear. “That’s all right. I never really had a mother to harass me about it.”

Clucking her tongue cheerfully, she gave him a more thoughtful look. “Whatever I or anyone else say in regards to your clothing, your hair, anything, they are not _you,_ dear. You belong here as much as any of the rest of us do.”


	8. Chapter 8

“We could move the chairs and table, put the tree there,” Belle said, walking past the spot she suggested.

“That’s too far in the corner. I’d like it to be somewhere more open. We have William and Neal this year.” Colette seemed to consider for a moment. “What do you think of moving the shelves?”

Turning, Belle looked at her mother. “The bookcases?”

“Only the center one,” Colette assured with a smile. She stepped over, putting an arm around Belle. “We won’t disturb your meticulously curated shelves.”

Belle sighed and relented. It was a good spot. She could keep an eye on whoever moved the bookcase. “I’ll call the decorators when I get to work. They’ll already have us penciled in, but I’ll make sure to get a concrete appointment.”

“Decorators?” Will asked from the sitting room doorway. 

She turned to see him there with Neal, watching them with a look of confusion. “Yeah,” she answered, grinning. “It’s officially Christmas, now. First of December.”

He seemed no less confused. “You hire professional decorators? To decorate for Christmas?” 

“We do have a great deal of space to cover,” Colette reasoned. “And the decorators put everything together so much more nicely.”

Will nodded, but he didn’t appear convinced. Not completely. 

Belle turned to her mother. “Mama, why don’t we decorate the sitting room for ourselves? The decorators can do the rest of the house, but… Let’s trim the tree and all in here, the three of us?” 

Looking from one to the other of them, Colette didn’t take long giving in. “I see. Siding together now, are you? How will I ever win an argument again?”

“You didn’t win that many in the first place,” Belle teased and leaned to drop a kiss on her mother’s cheek before taking her purse from the end of the sofa.

Colette shook her head, turning to Will. “Are you ready to go, dear?”

“As ready as I can get,” he said, sounding a half dozen kinds of reluctant.

“Ready?” Belle asked as she searched the depths of her purse for her car keys. “Going where?”

Will opened his mouth, but her mother beat him to it with a mysterious, “You _might_ see later.”

Her mother sneaking around rarely boded well. Colette didn’t get into awful situations, really, but Belle was well aware where her and her sister’s tendency toward being impetuous came from, genetically speaking. If Will was tagging along with the baby, it couldn’t be too awful. She knew her mother wouldn’t get them into anything ridiculous.

Still, Belle gave them a suspicious squint. “Just don’t get into trouble?”

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“Oh, that’s beautiful. This is the one you should wear home,” Colette said, nodding slowly as she walked a circle around him. She brushed a hand over the back of the suit jacket and tugged down the waistcoat when she stood in front of again.

Whit didn’t recognize the person he saw in the full length mirror behind her. It wasn’t just the clothes. He had a hard time meeting his own eyes in the reflection.

“You’re a much easier fit than Maurice was,” she went on when he didn’t say anything. “They had to special make his suits. It took ages. Thank goodness all it takes is a seam or two and some hemming for you, William, dear.”

She’d had Jefferson drive them into Portland, to what was apparently the luxury men’s shop where her late husband bought his clothing. While Colette reminded the manager of the prolific amount of business her husband had provided and directed toward them, the rest of the employees shut the shop down to concentrate their morning on him. The first few minutes were all measuring tapes and men grabbing parts of his body to decide on sizes, and the rest was a flurry of fabrics and being shuffled in and out of a dressing room. 

Jefferson held Bay and stood by next to Colette, reminding her to sit down and stop fussing. He’d given approving looks as she had Whit try on this and that. There was something flattering in the way the butler gave him a once over and a smile when he came out of the dressing room.

Whit had never had so many clothes to his name, though. It felt absurdly extravagant, watching a pair of the store employees fill the car’s trunk with shopping bags and garment bags. Not to mention the guilt that sharpened and nagged inside him. 

“You tell them what _you_ want,” Colette instructed when she herded him into a salon. 

And it was nice to know that she meant it. She’d listened in the shop when he didn’t care for something, and when the hairdresser tried to push him past the simple trim he asked for, Colette stopped the man cold, demanding someone else step in ‘who could follow directions.’ Whit was glad to have her on his side. The idea of going up against her was a bit chilling.

While Jefferson got Bay buckled into the carseat once more, she took Whit aside. “I have something for you,” she said, unsnapping the flap over her purse and bringing out a checkbook in a velvety, brown leather cover. “I’ve added your name to the family account.”

He stared at it as though it might bite him. “What?”

“There will be a debit card in your name, but it hasn’t quite had time to arrive.” Colette held the checkbook out to him.

“What? No-” Whit’s horror grew. This had gone so much farther than he ever intended. “I can’t take that.”

She gave him a patient look. “It should fit right here in your jacket pocket,” she told him, folding his jacket lapel back along with his overcoat to place it inside. Letting them fall into place once more, Colette gave his chest a solid pat over it. “Now then. Our next stop is… well, Jefferson knows where to obtain a nice phone. Since mobiles are necessary to life at this point, aren’t they? Come on, get in, no time to waste.”

Whit gaped at her before climbing helplessly into the back seat. He felt as though he were hurtling head first through a rabbit hole, and he feared what would happen when he hit bottom.


	9. Chapter 9

Belle slid a stack of returned books across the counter, scanning them in. “Astrid? Where did you move those sticky notes with the titles on them?”

“Beside the mouse,” called Astrid from somewhere in the back. “Or maybe on the hold shelf?”

Her pair of heart-shaped notes turned up stuck to a box under the desk. “Found them!” she called back. 

There were a couple of people in town who had self-published, and she wanted to have a look at their books to see whether they would make a good addition to the library. The first seemed rather clever. Its preview was edited well. She’d added it to her basket and was skimming the preview for the second when someone walked in.

“Afternoon!” she greeted before turning away from the computer, and when she did look, her brain staggered to a full stop.

Her mother had taken Will shopping. That much was immediately obvious. There he stood in her library in a crisp black three piece suit, with a berry red buttondown and black tie. Her mother brought him closer, and she could see a subtle pattern in the weave of the tie fabric. He wore a black overcoat with deep red lining and a nice winter scarf in the same shade. 

There was something about the way he was dressed paired with Neal in his arms and the diaper bag on his shoulder that made her stomach flutter. Will was attractive anyway, but properly dressed, he was kind of… breathtaking.

As the thought passed through her head, she felt a pinch at her conscience. There was something intrinsically wrong with being attracted to her sister’s widower. It had been a week and a half since they got the news about Lacey. Less than that. But Belle felt a _pull_ toward Will. They were still grieving. It would be weird and wrong to behave in a manner anything more than friendly. The entire thing was probably transference, knowing that he and Neal were all that was left of her sister, and it made her feel like retreating to her office to lay her head on her desk.

She was embarrassingly lost in thought, kind of staring at Will, when she realized her mother had said something she missed. “Sorry, what?”

Colette repeated herself with a grin. “I said, are you free for lunch?” 

“I have some stuff to do.” Belle knew it was a lame excuse as soon as it came out of her mouth.

Apparently Astrid heard the lameness of it, too, because there was a clang behind her, and when she looked, her assistant librarian was engaged in some emphatic nodding.

Will looked to Colette. “Maybe I should just go home with you.”

“I’m not going home. I have other errands that I need to look after by myself.” She turned back to her daughter. “Take William and Neal, go somewhere nice. Show them around town.”

Will said nothing. He looked a lot like he was hoping he’d disappear, though.

“You know what? It’s a slow day and I could use a break.” Belle smiled when he looked up at her.

“Good. Excellent.” Her mother turned to go, patting Will’s shoulder as she passed. “Have a good time!”

He waited until Colette had gone, then said to Belle, “You don’t have to do this. I can make it back.”

“Do you _want_ to go out somewhere fancy to eat?” she asked, leaning on the counter. 

Will hesitated. “Not… particularly?”

“How do you feel about having something delivered here?”

“That sounds less nerve-wracking.”

“There’s this Vietnamese place across town,” she said, pulling out her phone. “They make the best pho. It’s great for winter lunches.”

Belle saw the change in him when he relaxed. He nodded. “Sounds perfect.”

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They ate at the desk in her office. It was less awkward than Whit expected, mostly thanks to Bay being a comfortable topic to return to. He was a bit surprised by the heat of the soup, but after some adjustment, he enjoyed it.

“Do you want to walk around, see the town?” Belle asked as they rounded up the empty containers. “I mean, there isn’t much town, but I’m happy to show you what’s here.”

He smiled. Her invitation meant far more than Colette pushing him at her at work. “I’d like to see.”

Whit walked with her from the library and down Main Street for a tour of most of the town. Storybrooke was just beautiful. The town was small, quiet - everything about it was lovely. It was the kind of place he would love to raise Bay, if he’d a choice. There were good schools and parks, community events. Precisely the sort of place he didn’t belong.

He worried that Bay might get cold or uncomfortable, but his son seemed content in his exceptionally bundled up state. More than once on their tour, he saw people with walking strollers, and they served to reassure him that he wasn’t being a terrible parent. At some point during their walk, Belle curled her hand around his arm at the elbow much the way her mother did when she was guiding him along somewhere. 

“Margaret Chase Smith campaigned here. She gave a speech right here in front of the town hall. And I’m not sure how much truth there is to it, but as local legend goes, Longfellow visited on occasion to sit by the lake and think.” Belle looked up at him with a broad smile. “Those are pretty much our only claims to fame.”

“No broken records, nothing like that?” he teased.

She laughed and pulled him over to the sidewalk as car approached. “Not unless you count how many candles the nuns sell on Miner’s Day.”

“Miner’s Day?” Whit asked. “Local holiday?”

“We’re an old mining town. With functional mines,” she added, but she wrinkled her nose. “I’d show you, but they’re too far out of the way to walk and not exactly safe for touring.”

They passed the library going the other direction, and she drew his attention to other points of interest. The sheriff’s office, where her assistant librarian’s husband wound up in the drunk tank once a month for rowdiness at karaoke night. The sprawling oak at the big kids’ park where her friend Ruby had occasionally gotten ‘stuck’ so that the scruffy deputy - now sheriff - she had a crush on would rescue her. A big lattice arbor covered with overgrowth in a stand of trees just this side of the lake, where the mayor was going to get married almost twenty years before, until her fiancé disappeared.

“Is he doing okay?” Belle looked over at Bay, into the small, open fold of the blanket around his face.

Whit checked, but the baby seemed content. He’d given Bay a bottle and a change before they left the library, and were his son cold, everyone in the vicinity would know about it. “He’s all right. Still enjoying a full tummy, I think.”

“You need a carrier of some kind,” she said, reaching out to touch the soft, thick outer blanket. “Something hands free.”

“That would make things easier,” he agreed. “I’d be surprised if there weren’t one already in the nursery. Everything else seems to be.”

She held more closely to his arm. “Jefferson will know. He put it all together.” 

They neared the lake, their walk moving more slowly. “Can I ask-” he began.

Before he could get his question out, she cut in. “You can ask whatever you want to.”

“Did something happen between you and Lacey?” When he saw Belle’s expression fall, he launched into apologies. “I’m so sorry, I shouldn’t have asked, it’s none of my business.”

She waved a shushing hand. “No, it’s completely your business. I mean, it’s the reason she was globe-hopping in the first place. Or one of the reasons, at least.” 

They walked for a few minutes alongside the frozen lake. People skated on it and children played in the snow around the perimeter. It was so beautiful and idealistic, he had a difficult time imagining that people actually lived this way.

At length, Belle seemed to be ready. “It’s got some family history behind it. Are you sure you still want to hear?”

“I want to hear,” he confirmed.

“So, quick rundown, our father started an advertising agency from scratch,” she began. “Apparently he hit precisely the right time in Australia for it to flourish like crazy. He was very young and very lucky in the clients he acquired, and the agency just sort of rocketed off. He met our mom on a business trip to London and they ended up getting married before he was due to go home. They were that kind of anvil-over-the-head love, the way Mama tells it.” 

Whit nodded along. “I’m with you so far.”

“We moved to New York when Lacey and I were about five because he wanted to set up a sister office there. Mama hated it, though. The city was bad for her nerves. After maybe… two years in New York? We moved here. Our father had the estate built from the ground up.”

“He sounds like a clever man.”

“Yeah. He was. In business. Not so much on the family front.” She sent a bit of a sad smile over at him. “He and Mama loved each other like mad, don’t get me wrong. Somehow, though, he just didn’t have what it takes to be a proper father. Things had to be his way to be correct. He had our futures mapped out before we were born and there was no room for deviation. Do you get what I mean?”

“I do.” He could feel her disappointment. It was a different type than he felt toward his own father, but he could sympathize.

“Our father ran our lives in a way that could only lead to bringing us into the agency after university. He planned to eventually hand it all over to us after he retired. After we graduated, he called a meeting of the board to officially bring us into the fold. As creepy as that sounds. It kind of felt creepy, too.” Belle shrugged and shook her head. “Lacey and I were all dressed up, the nicest business suits money can buy, professionally done up to make the very best of impressions on these people. We were waiting outside the boardroom for our father to tell us to come in. And she turned to me with this wild look of terror in her eyes. She started pulling her hair down, and she just walked out.”

“And?” he asked when she didn’t continue, expecting there to have been some manner of family blow-up.

She pressed her lips together over a frown. “And that’s the last time I saw her in person.”

“How many years ago was this?”

“Ten this year. A couple of months after it happened, Mama and I got postcards from her with New Zealand postmarks. Mama’s postcard was full of assurances that she was fine. Mind said, ‘Congrats! How’d it go?’”

He cringed a little at the sheer amount of hurt in Belle’s voice. “It sounds like you have every right to still be angry with her.”

“I just never understood. I still don’t,” she admitted.

“What happened after?” Whit asked as they rounded the far end of the lake.

Belle sighed, and it took another moment for her to go on. “I joined my father at the ad agency. And I _loathed_ it. I couldn’t stomach the idea of doing that for the rest of my life. I was struggling to find a way to tell him I wanted out when he died. That was just about two years after Lacey left. He had a stroke on the way home from work, no warning.”

“I’m sorry,” he offered.

She didn’t answer, only looking down at their feet in the thinly-snowed grass. “Mama sold the company to my father’s partner afterward. It went for a ridiculous amount of money. The family could live for ten generations off interest alone.”

That revelation left Whit stunned. He’d known they were wealthy, of course. It was impossible to miss. They way she described it was unimaginable though. “Your family is that well off, but you work at the library.”

She beamed over at him. “Very rarely is that actual work for me. I love books. I was at the library every second I could steal away from our father’s schedule for us. It was never not in a state of disrepair one way or another growing up, but it was my favorite place in the world.”

He recalled how bright and new the library looked. “It isn’t in disrepair now.”

“Exactly. After I noped out of my father’s legacy, I went back to school and got a degree in library science for the sole purpose of taking over here,” she told him, tension leaving her expression at simply talking about it. “Some mysterious anonymous donor made it possible to renovate everything and bring in new books.” 

“Mysterious,” he repeated. “Can’t imagine where that donation came from, hm?”

Belle’s smile grew wider. “No idea. Not a clue.”

“Speaking of your library. Don’t you need to get back?” he asked.

Belle glanced at her phone and then behind them as though she could see the library from where they were. “No…” she said slowly, looking up at him. “The day is almost over. Astrid can handle closing. Do, um- do you need to get home?”

He looked to his son. Bay was perfectly happy, warm in his winter jumpsuit and hat and blankets. He wasn’t yet due for a feeding, he didn’t fuss as though his diaper needed a check. Whit had no excuse to go. And honestly, he didn’t want one. “I could stay out a while longer.”

“Why don’t we walk around a little more, then?” Her hopeful smile grew more cheerful. When they made it back to Main Street, she hummed, recalling, “You know, Jefferson kind of did for me and Lace what we did today. Looking around town, pointing out things about local history.”

“Jefferson?” Whit was beginning to understand that the man was far more than an employee to the family. “Your parents didn’t show you the town when you moved?”

“Our father was all business, and Mama was all about him at that point. The schools here have a block of history solely on Storybrooke, but I was upset about the move, so I couldn’t have been less interested. Jefferson rounded us up one Saturday and told us, ‘you’re going to pass history if I have to throw you under a tour bus.’”

Whit could see the butler saying it with the cheeky smile he tended toward. “How did that work out?”

“Oh, it worked great. He walked us around town, fed us junk food, poured awful facts into our heads along with the boring stuff.” She laughed, then sighed again, and her smile faded.

“You miss her,” he said, but of _course_ she did. Lacey was more than her sister. She was her twin.

“She was smart and energetic, and everyone loved her. She made friends everywhere she went. Lacey acted as if life were easy. She was the kind of person people always say ‘she lit up the room’ about.”

“So do you.”

“What?” Belle blinked over at him. 

He hadn’t intended to say it aloud. It jumped right out of his mouth before he knew what he was saying. _That_ was dangerous. “I only mean- you- you’re- today’s been wonderful. You lit up the whole town for me.”

She smiled an odd smile and held more tightly to his arm. “Well, that’s the town. There are some houses at the outskirts, and a couple of farms out on forest roads, but the lion’s share of it is fairly central, here.”

They walked in the direction of the library again. “We should get back, I guess. It’ll be time for a bottle soon.”

“I’ll call Jefferson and see if he has time to zip over and take you home,” she said, taking her phone from her coat pocket. “If not, I can drive you.”

“You don’t have to do that. I don’t want to be more of an inconvenience.”

Belle looked him in the eyes mid-dial. “You are _not_ an inconvenience. Not to any of us. And as far as driving you home, I don’t mind in the least.”

Jefferson had time, it turned out. “Mama’s just been parked in a comfortable chair with her feet in a paraffin wax bath, so she won’t be going anywhere for a while,” Belle relayed. “He’ll meet us at the library.”

Her pace didn’t speed up, and he was in no hurry, either. Belle’s company was the best he’d had in longer than he could remember. 

Whit slowed as they passed a small jewelry shop. “Do they do repairs?”

“I’m sure they must.” She was already veering for the shop. “You have something that needs repair?”

He nodded, thinking of the ring tucked into the bottom of his waistcoat pocket. “Do you mind if we stop in?”

“Not at all. Come on,” she said, opening the glass door.

The jeweler was a tall woman with a cool expression who introduced herself as Mallory Drake. She put on a pair of purple glasses with what he could only imagine were diamonds glinting at the temples to have a look at the ring he showed her, making much of the design. 

His mother’s ring was gold, the band engraved with delicate swirls. A pretty, round diamond sat at the center, where it was once flanked by a pair of small rubies. His father had chipped one out while she was ill. To pay a gambling debt. Whit remembered seeing him do it. When she died, he had taken the ring off her out of fear that his father would sell the rest of it. Malcolm accused him, but finally decided, after beating him senseless, that he didn’t have it and that the funeral home must have stolen it.

“It’s a simple repair,” Ms. Drake told him, clicking her glasses back down on the counter. “But it may take me a few days to match the shape and color of the stone.”

“Can you give me an idea how much it would cost?” he asked.

The jeweler looked between him and Belle, as though she were surprised that he asked about price. “Mm… labor, stone, altogether around four hundred.”

Whit’s thoughts spun. It was too much. Ms. Drake set the ring down on the counter and he started to reach for it. 

“Will, Mama set you up with the checking account, didn’t she?” Belle asked quietly. “She said she meant to.”

“She did. She all but shoved a checkbook at me this morning.”

“She didn’t push you too hard today, did she? The clothes, everything? I know she can go a little far.”

He shook his head, though he wasn’t sure, himself. “Everything was fine. She was very… in control.”

“I’m certain she was.” Belle’s smile quirked in understanding. She turned to the jeweler. “Go on and repair it, please?”

“Belle, I can’t-” he started to refuse.

“It’s all right.” She put her hand over his on the glass countertop, moving it away from the ring. “More than all right. The ring is important, and it should be made whole.”


	10. Chapter 10

“Belle told me a bit about how she and Lacey parted ways,” Whit said as he helped Jefferson empty shopping bags and put things away, despite being told that help was unnecessary.

“I never really had to worry about Lacey.” Colette sat on the soft, upholstered bench at the end of the bed, one of the albums she’d brought in open across her lap. “Lacey dynamited her way through things, had more friends and boyfriends than I could keep up with. She always stood up for herself. Belle, though. Belle _is_ impulsive, but she would prefer spend time with her books than go out.”

Whit glanced over when Jefferson took a hanger away from him, changing how the suit jacket hung on it before putting it in the closet. “There’s nothing wrong with that,” he said, feeling oddly defensive of Belle.

“No, I suppose not. And I’ve come around to that. I made up my mind not to pressure her about friends or romance, because if books make her happy, then I’m happy for her…”

“Is there a ‘but’ there?”

Colette ran her fingertips over a photograph of both her daughters. “Belle is lonely. As time goes on, I see it.”

Pausing in the middle of hanging a pair of trousers, Jefferson looked to Colette with concern. He shifted a more amused look to Whit, but said nothing.

“Did you enjoy your outing with her this afternoon?” Colette asked. “Jefferson says you had a tour all over town.”

Whit flicked a quick look to the butler. Jefferson’s full attention was on folding away an empty garment bag, but Whit could see a rather satisfied smile on the man’s face.

“I did. I enjoyed it, I mean,” he said, not at all sure what to expect of the turn in conversation.

She nodded and quietly closed the album, setting it aside. “Perhaps you might do more of that, then. You and Belle, I believe it might be good for you, finding solace together.”

Jefferson cleared his throat lightly, taking a pair of shoe boxes from one of the bags. “Miss Belle adores ice skating. It was her second favorite thing, when she was small,” he said, giving Whit a meaningful look. “She hasn’t been in years.”

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He felt far too much like he was preparing to ask someone on a date, which wasn’t the intention. A date would be inappropriate. Potentially offensive, even. This was simply an attempt at taking Belle’s mind off things and encourage her to do something she enjoyed.

After dinner, Whit stood in front of her bedroom door for a good five minutes before he managed to knock despite the worry that he was intruding on her. She answered with a book held open over her chest. 

“Hey,” she said, a note of curiosity in her voice.

He echoed her greeting back to her, “Hey,” and realized perhaps he should have spent a few moments deciding _how_ to ask her instead of assuming he could simply do it without sounding like an idiot.

A few silent seconds passed before she asked, “Everything okay?”

“Fine. Everything’s fine.” He nodded, trying to think quickly. _Just ask,_ he told himself, _don’t hem and haw._ “Would you like to go ice skating? It doesn’t have to be today. I know it’s getting late. Sometime when-”

She lit up, though. “I’d love to. I’ll meet you downstairs in ten minutes?”

Whit smiled at her closed door, relieved that she was up for it. The feeling faded a bit as he remembered how long it had been since he’d skated, himself. He went down the hallway to his room, suddenly more concerned with not embarrassing himself.

On the bed, before he made it to the dresser to sort out a pullover, he found a big white, lidded box. A pair of nice, black leather gloves lay on top. He set them aside and opened the box to find a pair of ice skates already tucked into a black skate bag. Jefferson was a bit _too_ intuitive. It was like having a fairy godmother.

He put on a pullover on top of his shirt and took the overcoat out of the closet. The red scarf that Colette had assured him was flattering lay folded neatly on top of the dresser, and he draped it around his neck before taking the skates and heading downstairs to wait for Belle. 

Colette had volunteered to keep Bay, to no one’s surprise. A bassinet appeared in the sitting room, but Whit doubted the baby would see much of it. She didn’t tend to put Bay down when she had him.

“We’re going to have a delightful time of it,” she assured Whit, bringing the baby into the foyer with her. “We’ll watch a bit of TV, have a formula nightcap, and change into our pajamas.”

Bay reached for the warm gray string of pearls Colette wore, his fingers grazing them, and it didn’t seem to concern her in the least. Whit smiled. “Sounds like you have everything planned.”

It took more than the ten minutes she’d set, but Belle came downstairs, bundled up and carrying a blue skate bag with red roses all over. “Ready, Will?”

“Ready,” he said, now certain that she would end up skating circles around him. He bent to brush a kiss over Bay’s forehead and whispered to him, “I’ll be back soon.”

“We’ll be all right,” Colette said, giving the baby a little sway.

Jefferson walked in from the hallway that Whit had finally learned led to the dining rooms and kitchen, ready for outdoors. “At your service, Miss Belle,” he said as he wiggled a driving glove into place.

“I can drive. It’s fine,” Belle told him. “I don’t want to derail your evening.”

“I don’t mind at all.”

“Jefferson, it’s okay. I can drive the two minutes to the lake.” 

He opened the door, making a dramatic gesture to invite them out ahead of him. “I insist.”

Belle looked to Whit and shrugged. “Guess we’re being chauffeured after all.”

The lake was filled with skaters when they arrived, though granted, they were mostly children. They sat on an empty bench at the edge to put on their skates. Jefferson sat to presumably watch over their things.

“Do you know how to skate?” Belle asked, taking his hand as they went down onto the ice.

Whit very much hoped that he still did. “It’s been a fair few years, but yeah. There’s a public rink I went to as a lad.”

“‘A lad,’” she repeated with a grin.

He looked to her, not understanding why she echoed him. “Sorry?”

“Nothing,” Belle said and shook her head. “Just, Scottish. My ears like it.”

The balance of ice skates came back to him, more or less, once they got started. After a few slow laps around the lake, she nudged him with her elbow and pointed with a mitten to the lakeside. Jefferson sat there with an auburn-haired man in a steel gray coat. They sat very closely, both smiling. The other man said something near Jefferson’s ear and he laughed.

“Now we know why he insisted on driving us,” she said, trading a smile with Whit.

Before he quite knew what was happening, Belle’s expression changed to shock and her arms shot out toward him in an attempt to hold on as her skates went out from under her. He grabbed her, trying to help, but it was too late and his efforts only ended with with both sitting on the ice. 

After a split second of stunned silence, still holding onto his arms, she burst into laughter. Whit laughed with her, laughing harder than he could remember.

“I’m so sorry,” she managed finally, her face pinker than the cold on its own could bring.

“It was time for a rest anyway,” he said, and that set her off laughing again. 

On the shore, Jefferson stood, his own expression decidedly not amused. Belle let go to wave. “Wave at him or he’ll be out here trying to help.”

Whit lifted a hand, giving the butler a short, sheepish wave, and Jefferson sat back down. “He worries.”

“Yeah, Jefferson was kind of a helicopter mom,” she said with a smile.

He got carefully to his feet and helped her up after him, holding onto her forearms until he was certain that she was steady on her feet. For her part, Belle had a good grip on handfuls of his coat sleeves. She looked up at him, and for a moment, she was all there was in the world. Blue eyes and flushed cheeks, her front teeth pinching her lower lip. She let go of her lip and exhaled, and it wasn’t until her breath fogged on the air between them that he realized he wasn’t breathing, himself. Belle had such a beautiful smile, and there it was directed right at him.

Whit wanted to kiss her. Badly. The fact that he couldn’t only made the need that much worse.

Blessedly, she broke the moment, finding ice shavings all over her coat. She let go of him to brush herself off. He angled a skate to glide the equivalent of a step away from her. 

“Is everything okay?” she asked when she looked to him again. “Will?”

That was him. The name he was meant to answer to, at least. “Hm?”

“You keep touching your chest.” Belle made a motion, her mitten patting to one side of her breastbone. “Are you all right? Didn’t you have some smoke inhalation?”

“No. I mean, yes,” he replied, confused for a second. He hadn’t realized. Not really. But it was the way he patted Bay to comfort him. “My son. I’ve never been this far away from him I think.”

Her expression softened. “Why don’t we head home?”

“Are you sure?” he asked.

Belle closed the small distance he’d made, looping her arm through his. “My backside has had enough ice for the night. I’m sure.”

By the time their skates were off, Jefferson stood by to put them away in the bags. Whit fiddled with his gloves while the butler said goodbye to his boyfriend, intending to give them some modicum of privacy. Belle, however, watched them unreservedly, a big smile on her face. She took clear joy in Jefferson having someone. 

Once home, Jefferson relieved them of their damp outdoor things and shooed them away from their skates so that he could take them for cleaning up. Whit made a beeline for Bay. His son turned out to be sound asleep in the bassinet next to Colette, who napped on the sofa, both of them so peaceful that he hadn’t the heart to wake them.

“Cocoa?” Belle whispered, tugging at the sleeve of his pullover. He nodded and followed her through to the kitchen. “Look in the cupboard next to the sink and get a couple of mugs,” she directed him when they were no longer at risk of disturbing anyone.

A jar of fancy cocoa mix and a boiler sat on the counter beside the stove, and she had the refrigerator open when he turned back. Jefferson came in, taking a polishing cloth from the small cleaning supply closet. He watched Belle dig around in the fridge for a moment.

“Would you prefer I make the cocoa?” he asked, an eyebrow raised when she finally turned around with her arms full.

“No, thank you,” Belle said a little obstinately. _“I_ can do it.”

Before stepping out of the kitchen, Jefferson gave Whit a look that spoke to this being the way it had always been. 

Cocoa appeared to take far more effort than he remembered. Having his help waved off also, he leaned against the counter while she made it, scorching the milk once before getting it timed better the second time around. 

“This is my own recipe,” Belle said as they sat down at the counter with their cocoa. “Sort of. I find it comforting, anyway.”

The result was topped with marshmallows and whipped cream, and almost cringingly rich. Whit sipped carefully, but he watched as she took a deeper drink from her mug. When she came up for air, a bit of whipped cream went with her. 

He gestured to his own face. “You have a little…”

Belle laughed and wiped across her top lip with side of her finger, missing the dot on her nose. Instead of telling her again, Whit reached over, getting it for her.

“Here I was aiming for sassy and failed right into looking silly,” she said, wiping her face properly with a napkin, just in case.

 _You look beautiful,_ he thought, but he couldn’t say it. “I think we could both use some silly right now.”

She smiled and he couldn’t take his eyes off her. Whit struggled not to feel anything more than friendliness toward Belle, but his heart thumped with the way she looked at him. He was absolutely feeling something.

“I should-” He stood, making the kitchen stool rock on two legs, and grabbed it out of fear that it would crash to the tile. “I, ah- I should take Bay- the- the baby and go on upstairs. It’s been a long day.”

“Yeah, of course,” she said, and he wondered if he were imagining the disappointment on her face. “You should spend time with him before bed.”

Whit set his cup in the sink. “Thank you. For the cocoa. And the skating.”

“Anytime.” Belle sounded as though she really did mean it. “Good night, Will.”

It twisted a knife somewhere in the vicinity of his heart every time they called him by that name.

“Good night,” he wished her before hurrying out to get Bay.

Colette looked as if she still slept. He lifted his son from the bassinet, and the baby made a fussy little sound, not appreciating his own nap being disturbed. Whit shushed him softly.

“You’re home,” Colette said, waking. She sat up and folded the throw back from her lap. “Did you have a nice evening?”

“I think we did. We had a good time, yeah.” He rubbed Bay’s back and smiled. “I was just on my way up to bed. Belle’s in the kitchen.”

“I’m glad you had fun.” She shook the silver and pearl bracelet watch on her wrist until the face made its way around. “It looks as if my bedtime has come and gone. Come on, dear. I’ll walk you up.”


	11. Chapter 11

“It isn’t tall enough,” her mother said, judging the tree she’d suggested as lacking in height, the same as the previous four.

“Mama…” Belle half sighed, half laughed. “There’s only so tall it can be before someone has to climb a full size ladder to put a topper on.”

Colette walked through the tree lot with Jefferson hovering protectively nearby, occasionally pausing to evaluate. “William says we’ll know when we see the perfect tree. I haven’t seen the perfect tree yet.”

“I may have gone a wee bit overboard in my encouragement?” Will whispered over to Belle in response to the look she gave him.

“May have!” She swatted at his arm good naturedly. The genuine flinch he gave was unexpected, as was the amusement falling away from his features. Belle slipped her arm through his more calmly.

“This one,” Colette announced, circling an enormous blue spruce. “This would be stunning in the sitting room. White lights, our lovely star on top.”

Tall as the tree her mother had chosen was, Belle wasn’t sure the star would fit. “It’s perfect, Mama,” she said, because if they went on, her mother’s next choice would have to be set up in the foyer. 

Jefferson motioned over one of the teenage boys Granny hired every year to schlep around and deliver trees. The boy tagged their spruce and took down the delivery address, promising that it would be there before lunch. Ruby sat out front next to a small fire pit. Her sexy elf outfit made the fire and her proximity to it a necessity. There was strongbox under her chair and a sign taped to the arm of it saying ‘Pay here - thieves will be reported to Santa.’

“How is Granny?” Jefferson asked as he paid for the tree.

Handing over a handwritten receipt, Ruby grinned. “Ornery as ever.”

He waved off the change she tried to give him, as well. “Tell her that the French family says ‘hello.’”

The shops were a bit hectic. It seemed half the town had the same idea in regards to making additions to their holiday decor. Belle had a moment where she truly thought she might have words with a woman who grabbed a Baby’s First Christmas ornament right out from under her hand as she reached for it. If she hadn’t seen another laying in with the bags of tinsel, she might’ve. Her mother sat in the car while they shopped, not quite feeling up to the chaos.

By the time they arrived home, the tree had been delivered, and the maids were in the process of figuring out the stand. Jefferson hurried to step in and keep the tree balanced while they got the screws tightened around the trunk. When the twine holding it together for delivery was cut, it absolutely overflowed the space Colette had directed to be cleared. She seemed satisfied with its size and shape in the sitting room, though.

Her mother sat by with Neal snuggled to her, having a cup of tea while she and Will went through the storage boxes holding Christmas ornaments. She hadn’t expected tree trimming to be a full day’s activity, but between shopping, stories about this ornament and that one, and general silliness in the course of decorating, they didn’t finish until near dinner.

“You should put the star on,” she told Will when everything else was done. “It should be yours this year.”

Will, still wearing the long piece of gold tinsel she’d draped around his neck and shoulders like a glittering scarf, was reluctant. He eyed the step ladder Jefferson brought in. “It’s your tree. You should have the privilege.”

“But it’s your first year here,” Belle said, unwrapping the star from its layers of tissue paper and holding it out to him.

He shook his head. “I really think you should do it.”

“Will-” She was ready to launch into a short speech about how he was a part of the family, how it would be a sweet symbol of just that, him putting the topper on, when he leaned close.

Very quietly, he confessed, “I’m not much for heights…”

“Oh! I’m sorry,” she apologized, and his cheeks went a bit pink. “It’s all right. Here, be my helper, then.”

Will held the large, cutwork golden star while she climbed up. She took the star when she reached the ladder’s top rung, and he kept a hand at her back as she stretched up to put it on top of the tree. It _was_ a little to tall, it turned out. The immaculately decorated tree ended up with a topper forced to sit at a considerable lean. Belle giggled to herself.

“What is it-” her mother began. “Oh, for goodness sake.”

Behind her, Will chuckled. “I told you it was too tall,” Belle said, laughing at her mother’s reaction. She might have lost her balance if Will weren’t there to hold onto her hands as she went back down the ladder.

They sat, Belle on one side of her mother and Will on the other, and simply looked at the tree they’d worked so diligently on over the course of the afternoon. She had to admit, it was the most beautiful tree they’d ever had. No professional decorating could hold a candle to this. Belle sank down in the sofa a bit, reveling in the aura of magic in it, in the lights glinting off the ornaments, the decorations that made the room so much cozier somehow. In the feeling of sitting with her family here in the middle of it all.

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Having the house in full Christmas regalia had certainly boosted everyone’s mood. She felt it, herself. The heavy atmosphere around home had begun to lift. The sitting room, in particular, had turned far warmer as a result of the decorations they’d accomplished for themselves.

Belle was inspired to go ahead and put up the library’s Christmas things. She stood on one of the sturdy chairs from the study tables, hanging a battery operated Dickensian lantern on the end of the stacks when Will came into the library again. It might have taken her a few minutes to notice, were it not for her assistant librarian.

“Ooh! You brought the baby back!” Astrid squeaked from somewhere behind her.

Taking a bauble-decorated wreath off her arm, Belle stepped down. She saw he’d either found or her mother outfitted him with a baby carrier much like what she had suggested. It was a wrapped situation, going over Will’s shoulders and around his body, holding Neal curled up like a tiny kangaroo in a pouch, head near his father’s heart inside Will’s overcoat. The baby was bundled up in a knit cap and sweater of his own, and she was certain that, snug against his father’s chest, he was plenty warm. 

She went right over coo nonsense at her nephew for a few moments, reaching in to touch one little hand. Neal wrinkled his nose. His entire face scrunched up before he cracked an eye open at her.

“So,” she said to Will, “you haven’t been Shanghaied this time, I take it?”

His gaze dropped over that bashful, lopsided smile he sometimes gave. “I wandered in all on my own this time.”

Someone could fall in love with that smile, were they not careful. Belle bit the inside of her cheek. Someone.

“Are you looking for a particular book?” she asked.

“I’m looking for a particular person,” he said quietly. “It’s almost lunchtime.”

Belle’s heart gave a happy thump that forced her to have to hide a gasp. He’d come in just to have lunch with her again. “How do you feel about lobster corn dogs?”

His expression was unsure when he replied, “I feel… conflicted. What?” 

“It _sounds_ weird, but it works, I promise,” she assured him as she took out her phone to order. “And they give you this tamarind brown butter dipping sauce with them - I have to restrain myself from drinking it.”

She let him into her office, where he fed Neal while they waited for their food to be delivered. From only the quick peek she got, she could tell that the diaper bag was well stocked, whoever had packed it. 

Following lobster corn dogs and a shared order of fried blue cheese balls, Belle called down to the jewelry shop. The jeweler had been given almost twice as much time as estimated. Surely the ring that Will left at the shop must be repaired.

“Your mom’s ring is ready,” she relayed the jeweler’s apprentice’s message to Will. “Ms. Drake just finished it before they closed for lunch. Do you want to go pick it up?”

He wiped his mouth, taking a sip of iced tea from his cup. “I’d like to. You don’t have to come along if you have more important things here.”

“This is important,” Belle told him, turning to grab her coat off the filing cabinet behind her. “Besides, I still have time on my lunch hour, and some fresh air and a walk will do me good after _that_ meal.”

She could smell Christmas on the air. Quite literally, since the town was in the process of their annual placing of Douglas firs on the street corners. Belle remembered participating in the tree trimming contest every year in middle school. The Christmas stocking prizes were still in a box in the top of her closet.

Will held the door for her when they reached the shop. She didn’t think any man aside from Jefferson had ever opened a door for her. 

There was no wait to speak of. As soon as Ms. Drake saw them, she came over to the counter and took a ring box from a small number set aside to the edge of the locked display. “I believe I’ve matched the stone as perfectly as possible,” she said with a very even confidence.

He clicked the box open and a look of sadness crossed his face. 

Belle touched his arm. “It’s such a beautiful ring. I’d have thought you would want to get engaged using it?”

Will seemed a bit startled. His mouth hung open for a second. “Oh. She- she wanted something bigger. And with the stone missing anyway-”

“That sounds like Lacey,” she said with neither venom nor judgment to the observation.

“Would you like to pay now, sir, or shall I send a bill?” Ms. Drake asked.

“I’ll pay.” Will sounded rather reluctant as he took the checkbook from his inner jacket pocket.

“It’s your money, too,” Belle reassured him. “There’s nothing wrong with using it.”

He took the pen from the counter and began writing a check. After signing, however, he dropped the pen as though it had bitten him, and he tore the check from the pad, ripping it to pieces.

“Wrong date, wrong date,” he murmured, cramming the torn up check into his coat pocket. “Sorry. The days in the hospital, I guess they got my internal calendar all turned around.”

Belle felt a little spun. She wasn’t sure what she thought she’d seen.

He gave the jeweler another check and tucked the ring box into his pocket, and they left. Their walk back down the street was silent. She had to wonder if their silence was for the same reason.

“I’ll see you at dinner?” Will said when they reached the car parked just outside the library. He seemed barely able to meet her eyes.

She nodded, though, and she watched through the car window as he got Neal settled into the carseat, then as Jefferson drove them away. The most unpleasant thought slithered ’round and ’round in her head.

Belle went inside, standing in the library entry for a few minutes, unmoving. “Astrid, take care of the front for a while,” she finally asked. “I have something I need to do.”

“Sure. No problem,” Astrid said as she scanned in a return.

Going to her office, Belle closed and locked the door. With automatic motions, she took off her coat and laid it over the filing cabinet behind her, took her phone from her pocket, and sat down. She started to dial, but cancelled halfway through and set her phone on the desk. Picking up a string of paperclips that draped over the edge of her pen cup, she fidgeted.

When she finally gathered enough nerve, she picked her phone up and dialed. It rang twice before someone picked up. “Storybrooke Sheriff’s Department.”

“May I speak with Sheriff Humbert?” she asked.

“You sure can. Hold on.”

There was a click and one ring, and the line picked up again. “Humbert.”

“Graham,” she began, hesitating for an instant before forcing herself forward. “I need a favor.”

He sounded concerned right off. “Belle? Everything okay?” 

“I’m… not sure, exactly,” she admitted. “That’s the favor.”

“I’ll do anything I can. What do you need?”

“Do you know if the names of the fatalities from the fire have been released?” Belle had no idea whether she was allowed to ask as a family member of one of the deceased. She was ready to be turned down. And to find an alternate path to the information she wanted, if necessary.

Graham’s reply was quick. “Do you want it to your fax or e-mail?”

“Just e-mail it, if you don’t mind?” She closed her eyes, not sure in which direction she might regret it.

They’d barely hung up when the notification popped up on her phone. Her stomach twisted as she read down the list, hoping that she was wrong, hoping she’d just imagined what she thought she saw in the jewelry shop.

Belle sat back, having to concentrate to breathe. 

She sent the file to the printer on her desk and gathered her things while it went through. Grabbing the list, she folded it, scoring the edges angrily with her fingernails as she walked out. 

“Astrid, I need you to cover the rest of the day,” she said on her way past the front desk. “I have to get home.”

“Is everything okay?” Astrid asked after her.

Belle closed her hand around the printout, feeling it crumple. “I hope so.”


	12. Chapter 12

“Mama?” Belle called when she got into the house. She let the maid who greeted her take her coat and purse, keeping the paper tight in her fist. “Are you down here?”

“Sitting room,” her mother called back to her. “Belle? Why are we yelling?”

“Mama, there’s something I need to tell you.” She walked in, pausing mid-step. “Abigail? What brings you by? Mama, why is your lawyer here?”

Abigail smiled over at her, sifting through the stack of paperwork on her lap. “Colette asked me to come over and amend her will to include her son-in-law and grandson.”

“Oh, has she?” Belle sat next to her mother, speaking quietly to her. “Mama, you can’t do this.”

“This is not the time, darling,” her mother said, patting her knee.

She took her mother’s hand to get her attention. “This is exactly the time.”

Colette gave her a patient look.

“I discovered something about Will that you have to know. I talked to Graham-” Belle began.

Her mother didn’t seem to be having it, though. “Have you been _investigating_ William?”

“Mama-” She stopped when one of the maids came into the room, Will right on her heels. 

“We will discuss this later,” Colette told her firmly.

“Lizzie says you need me?” Will said, first looking to Colette, then smiling over at Belle. “Hey. You’re home early.”

Belle couldn’t bring herself to return his smile as wholeheartedly as usual. The falter in his expression told her he’d noticed.

“We always need you, dear.” Colette held a hand out to him to bring him closer, then gestured to Abigail. “William, I want you to meet my attorney. Abigail Midas.”

His face filled with confusion, but he shook the lawyer’s hand when she extended it. “Hi…”

“I do hope you won’t hold the ‘attorney’ thing against me,” Abigail joked.

“I wanted you to come down because I realized that I need to change my will,” Colette explained. “You and Neal need to be included now.”

Belle concentrated on his face, examining him for expectation, satisfaction - anything that gave away he had been angling for this. She fully expected him to jump at the chance. Honestly, anyone would be mad _not_ to go all in at the prospect of that kind of money.

Will, however, looked as if he’d been slapped. _“…What?”_

She saw Abigail with a weather eye on him, too, though she wasn’t sure she liked that.

“No!” Will said, reeling back. “No, you can’t do that!”

“Pardon me?” Colette pointed to the cushion next to her on the sofa. “Sit down, William. Why not?”

After a tentative moment, he sat beside her, but he looked all the more distressed. “You- you just can’t.”

“You’re a part of this family. You and my grandson belong in the will, so that you and he can be taken care of, at length,” she told him, quite insistent.

Abigail placed a considerable sheaf of papers on the coffee table in front of them and Will recoiled. “No! You can’t put my name in there. That’s not why I came here.” He looked to Belle, and there was real desperation in his eyes. “Belle, tell her she can’t do this.”

“William, dear, what about your son?” Colette said, resting a hand on his forearm. “Do you not believe he should be provided for?”

“I know you want what’s best for- for Neal. He’s why I’m here. Because of him, and you.” He looked to Belle again. “And you…”

The emotion in his face made her heart skip. He was genuine. He _seemed_ genuine.

“We’re here because you took us in after-” Will shook his head. “Not because you have money. We aren’t here for money.”

Colette patted his arm. “Of course you aren’t! No one here believes that.” She looked to her attorney, then to Belle, casting the same scolding look over them both. 

“Just… don’t sign it. Don’t change your will. Please?” he pled.

She gave him a searching look. “William, your nobility is appreciated, but it’s my money to do with what I choose.” Taking his chin in the space of her forefinger and thumb, she gave his face a bit of a fond shake like a child. “And for that matter, I want to sign it more now even than before.”

Colette smiled over at Belle and picked up the pen. She signed the papers with a large, flourished signature. “There. File that as soon as possible, Abigail.” Clicking the cap onto the pen, she set it on top. “Now. Belle. You had something you wanted to discuss?”

Will looked absolutely taken aback that she’d signed. He leaned back into the sofa, pale and still frightened. 

“No,” Belle said, shifting a slow look from her mother to Will. She gave them both a tired smile. “Nothing.”

Something strange was going on. But she believed that Will - or whoever this man was - wasn’t there to take advantage of them or hurt them. He was too fearful at even the prospect of being added to her mother’s will for that.

Her mother and Abigail began discussing how long it would be before the will was effective, and Will lifted his hands to cover his face. While they were occupied, Belle stood, crossing to the fireplace. Before she could think twice, she let the printout fall from her hand into the fire. She watched it burn through, taking the names _‘Whitney Gold and unnamed infant’_ with it.


	13. Chapter 13

“Mrs. French!” Lizzie called from beyond the sitting room, scurrying in a couple of seconds after her voice reached them. “Mrs. French? I’m so sorry to interrupt, but… it’s Mr. Jefferson.”

Whit stood, looking to Belle. She met his eyes across the room. The record in his head that skipped continually over the worry that she’d seen him sign his name screeched to a halt. If the maid was so upset, something was wrong, and his own panic could wait. 

“We’ll take care of it,” Belle said as her mother got to her feet.

They followed the maid out, across the foyer, past the main staircase, and down a hallway to reach the door leading to the back garden. There lay Jefferson on the lawn.

“Is he all right?” Whit asked, already on his way across the grass.

“Jefferson?” Belle knelt down next to him and he turned his head toward her. He was alive, at least. “What’s happened? Are you hurt? It isn’t your heart, is it?”

“My heart?” Jefferson made a sound, and Whit couldn’t tell whether it was a laugh or a sob. 

“It was that damn landscaper,” Lizzie said. She stood near one of his feet, shaking her head with disapproval. “Mr. Jefferson was crazy about him, but I could tell the jerk was using him. He didn’t know landscaping from his elbow.”

Belle sat back on her heels, relief replacing fear in her features. “He’s drunk.”

“What do we do?” Whit looked to Belle across the butler’s sprawled form.

She shrugged. “Get him to bed, I guess?”

“Jefferson?” Whit reached down. “Give me your hand. I’ll help you up.”

Ever so helpfully, Jefferson grabbed his hand… and pulled him down, slurring, “Lookit the stars.”

“It’s still daylight,” Belle said, glancing up as though she had to make sure. “I mean, it’s cloudy, but daylight.”

Jefferson sat up enough to put his arm around her, and he pulled her down, as well.

She went with it. “Oh, okay, we’re doing this now.”

More insistently, he told them, “Look at the stars!”

Whit exchanged a look with Belle over the butler again. “We’re looking.”

They lay there, Jefferson holding their hands. After a while, he leaned his head back to look at the large stand of wintered tea rose bushes at the far end of the garden. “Your mum’s been disappointed in those since Hans planted them. They never did bloom right.”

“She has,” Belle agreed.

“He was a _shitty_ gardener, I’ll tell you what.”

“He certainly was.”

Jefferson made a disgusted sound. “Think your mum would be angry if I took hedge clippers to everything he touched?”

“Under the circumstances, I think she’d get over it.” Belle patted his hand.

He sighed deeply and brought Whit and Belle’s hands up to his chest until their fingers touched. Jefferson looked at the sky again. Though it was heading into early evening now, it was still completely overcast.

“Aww. ’S too cloudy to see stars, isn’t it?” He frowned at the sky.

“I’m afraid so,” Whit said gently. “Maybe tomorrow night?”

Jefferson nodded. “Tomorrow night. By myself. Forever.”

_“Not_ forever,” Belle told him. “You’ll find someone. Someone who actually deserves you.”

“Not by tomorrow night,” he lamented.

“Well, no, probably not by tomorrow night. But soon. You’re too wonderful to be alone for long,” she reassured him.

“You, too, honey.” He pulled their hands up to his face, kissing one and then the other.

It was a soft look that she and Whit traded this time.

“I think it’s getting colder,” Whit said with meaning behind it.

He was glad that Belle caught on. “It is. I’m cold. Aren’t you cold?”

“I am. Jefferson?” he asked.

“Maybe we should move this party inside.” Jefferson sat up and somehow managed to weave even from there.

Belle and Whit got up with him holding onto them. It was only on the return walk to the house that Jefferson released their hands. Colette, who had of course followed at some point, patted Whit on the back, and the cook and both maids trailed inside, as well.

They got Jefferson to the staff wing, supporting him between them while he staggered and chatted drunkenly. “This is much wob… wobblier than the garden,” he muttered as they made their way down the hall.

Together, they sat him on the bed. Whit took Jefferson’s shoes, jacket, and waistcoat off while Belle confiscated the nearly empty bottle of cherry schnapps from the dresser. 

Whit loosened his tie. “There. That’s a bit more comfortable, right?”

“Right. Right as rain. Right… and left.” The butler sagged, sniffling miserably.

“Oh, Jefferson.” Belle sat, wrapping her arms around his neck. “I’m so sorry.”

Eventually, they got him turned around and under the covers. He seemed ready to drop off to sleep.

Jefferson grabbed Belle’s hand as they pulled the blanket higher, though. “He’s a good boy,” the butler said, pointing at Whit. “A good boy.”

She looked to Whit, who felt himself blushing terribly. “Yeah, he is.”

“You know what would make me happy?” Jefferson asked.

Belle smiled. “What?”

He patted her hand. “Dance for me.”

“Now, I know you’re not in the market for a lap dance. Not from me, anyway,” she kidded.

“Pfff,” he sputtered. “Slow dance. Dance with the boy. For me?”

“I don’t know…” She looked over at Whit again.

Jefferson beckoned Whit at though he weren’t right there. “You can dance, can’t you, boy?”

“Not- not very well?” Whit admitted.

The butler gave a drunkenly flippant wave of his hand. “Eh, ’s okay. Heartfelt slow dance doesn’t take talent. Just takes music.”

He rolled onto his stomach, dangerously near the edge, reaching for his phone on the nightstand. Dragging it into bed with him, he poked and prodded at it.

There was a false start with a startling bit of techno. “Nope, nope, wrong one. That’s sex music. _There_ it is.” He dropped the phone beside him, some slow and lilting orchestra music coming through the speaker. “Okay. Dance.”

Belle stepped around the end of the bed to Whit. “Shall we?”

“I really don’t know how,” he whispered, taking her hand as she put the other on his shoulder.

“It’s all right. You heard Jefferson.” She smiled up at him. “A heartfelt slow dance only takes music.”

They started off like a pair of primary school kids at a first dance, leaving room for a chaperone between. The space didn’t last long. Belle drifted closer as they swayed, her hand on his shoulder sliding along to curl over the back of his neck. She looked up at him, meeting his eyes, and even as his stomach flipped anxiously, he didn’t want their dance to end. Whit brought her hand closer to hold it against his chest.

A snore rattled from Jefferson’s distinct vicinity. Going still, they both looked over.

Belle whispered, “Do you think he’s-”

“I don’t hear dancing!” The butler’s head lifted from his pillow. “Why don’t I hear dancing?”

They smothered their laughter and, bringing herself close again, Belle urged him to continue. Their feet barely moved, swaying even less. At some point, he realized they were dancing in silence. He wasn’t sure when the song ended. When he stopped, she didn’t pull away as he expected her to. 

There was something so soft in Belle’s eyes, the way she looked up at him. He felt the slight pressure of her fingers at the back of his neck, above his shirt collar, the sensation causing a quick flutter behind his ribs. 

She leaned her head back and before he knew it, they were kissing. It was a shock to suddenly be kissing her, sending a wave of heat through his chest. And it was warm, comfortable, lovely. As though it was something they were meant to do. 

Belle moved only enough to break contact, and he could feel her breath on his face. It was only when he saw she was a bit breathless that he realized he was, too.

“I’m sorry,” he said, _feeling_ the frog form in his throat.

She shook her head. “No, don’t be sorry!”

Whit stepped back, though, letting go of her hand. “I should go. I should check on the baby.”

Before he could get away, she grabbed the front of his pullover and drew him down for another kiss. It was shorter. Quick, still sweet. He pulled back and stared at her, confused beyond sense.

“Belle…” he breathed. 

She opened her hands, laying them flat against his chest, and he lifted a hand to place it over hers. With a step back, Whit took himself out her reach and hurried from the room. He had to get away from her before worse happened.

Belle’s was the nicest kiss he’d ever had. And it was paired with the worst lie.

⫯⫰⫯⫰⫯⫰⫯⫰⫯⫰⫯⫰⫯⫰⫯⫰⫯⫰⫯⫰⫯⫰⫯⫰⫯⫰⫯

Her fingertips at her mouth, touching her lips, it was all Belle could do to stop herself from going after him. The feeling of kissing him lingered.

It took her some time to leave Jefferson’s room. She turned the light out as she went, going back through the house slowly, detouring through the sitting room. Her mother was at the wet bar in the midst of pouring something. 

“Mama?” she asked, and her mother spun around in surprise. “What do you think of Will? Really?”

Colette’s face relaxed into a smile. “I think he’s delightful.”

“I think he is, too.” Belle walked back and forth behind the sofa, pacing as she tried to sort her feelings out. “I think I like him. _Like_ him. Is that all right? Is it awful?”

“It isn’t awful, darling,” her mother reassured.

“He’s my sister’s widower. I thought. Maybe?” She shook her head. “Shouldn’t I feel guilty for having feelings for him? But all I feel is- is-”

Her mother waited a second before supplying, “Happy?”

Belle gave her a bright smile. As terribly upset as she was on the drive home from the library, she _was_ happy now. “I might be. I also might be having a stroke. Sometimes they’re hereditary.” She laughed anxiously. “Is it wrong?”

Colette, understanding, went to her. “You’re worried what Lacey would say.”

Pressing her lips together, Belle nodded. Either way, whoever Will was, she couldn’t stand the thought of Lacey hating her for this.

“Whatever happened between you and your sister, she loved you. More than any other person in the world,” her mother told her with a seriousness and intensity that Colette rarely showed anyone. “She never wanted anything less than happiness for you. And if that comes in the form of you and her widower finding solace in one another after her, I can’t imagine that she would begrudge you that. Either of you.”

Her mother pulled her into a tight hug. Belle kissed her cheek when she at last let go. Crossing over to the wet bar, she took the glass her mother had poured, taking it with her without a word when she left the room to go upstairs.


	14. Chapter 14

He didn’t think he’d spent a solid five minutes over the course of the last three days without drifting back to the moment he and Belle kissed. If he concentrated, he could still feel the touch of her lips on his. 

“What do you say, hm?” he asked Bay on the way upstairs to get the baby to wind down for a nap. “Do you think she meant it?”

Bay, resting against his shoulder, cooed sleepily in response.

“You’re right. Grief makes people do strange things.” Whit frowned and rubbed his son’s back. 

He pushed the bedroom door open and hesitated to step inside, caught a bit by surprise. Belle sat on the bed, one of the albums Colette brought in open on her lap. With her fingertips, she wiped across one cheek and then the other. 

“Hey,” he said quietly. “Are you all right?”

“I’m sorry, I came in looking for you and I saw the albums, and I couldn’t resist.” She looked up at him, teary, and gave a wry laugh. “I should’ve resisted.”

Whit laid Bay down underneath the baby gym set up in the open space between the bed and sitting area, and he went to sit down next to her. “You don’t have any reason to apologize.”

Her eyes went back to an old photo, running her fingers across the plastic covering it. She lingered affectionately on one of a pair of identical little girls’ faces. 

“When was that taken?” he asked.

“First day of school here. Second grade. I was excited for school to _finally_ start up again, but Lacey was angry that vacation was over. She threw the worst tantrum the night before.” Belle shook her head, her laugh more genuine this time. “I remember it so clearly. Mama promised a trip into Portland to the big toy store on the weekend for a toy each, anything we wanted, if Lace went to school without a fight.”

Whit smiled at the way she recollected it. “What did you get?”

“Well, Lacey cried every morning that first week, but Mama had Jefferson take us anyway. She got one of those big cardboard chests of dress-up costumes. I got a Barbie. And two dresses for her. Jefferson’s always been a pushover for us.” She smiled over at him.

He watched as she turned pages, stopping her to look more closely at a photograph of the two of them in the back garden. Both were covered with dirt, one holding a trowel. The other held a bucket.

“What’s going on here?”

“We decided to dig our way straight through back to Australia.”

Snorting softly, he ventured, “I’m assuming that didn’t work out?”

“It did not,” Belle admitted. “But not for lack of effort. As Jefferson tells it, he discovered us and told Mama, and she told him to let us try.”

“How far did you get?” Whit asked.

“Three feet, four inches,” she said without missing a beat. “We were very conscientious about our depth.”

He gave a quiet whistle. “Impressive.”

“Right? I feel good about it.” She grinned. “That’s a great job for a couple of eight-year-olds on a mission.”

“I don’t know if this is a sore subject, so feel free to tell me to leave it,” he began tentatively. “Does it bother you that your parents were a bit on the periphery?”

“It isn’t sore. It…” Belle stopped, her mouth pulling to one side in thought. “Sometimes I wish we’d gotten a more conventional upbringing. Yeah, we got more attention from staff than from our parents. But we were crazy about Jefferson. A skinned knee, hurt feelings, we went to Jefferson. Mama wasn’t _absent,_ she was just… busy with our father. _He_ was absent. She made sure she was there for important things, and when we really needed her.”

It sounded painful to Whit. He couldn’t imagine being so distant from Bay’s life.

“That said, I would never let my children be raised the way I was.” She sighed and smiled over at him. “Thank you.”

He shook his head. “For what?”

“For letting me talk and reminisce without looking at me as if I should fall apart at the seams.” She said, leaning her head on his shoulder.

Whit wasn’t quite sure what to do. So he sat there, enjoying her leaning on him. After a little while, she sat up and closed the album, going to put it back on the dresser. She went over to Bay and squatted down to rub his tummy, and he gave her a cheerful squawk in return.

“How would you feel about making cookies?” Whit asked.

“Cookies?” She looked back, then down at Bay again. “I wouldn’t mind making some cookies. Would you like to help your dad and Auntie Belle make cookies?”

“Papa…” he corrected.

“Hm?”

“It’s- it’s what I want him to call me. When he can. Papa.”

“Your _papa,”_ she said before looking back to Whit. “Mama’s been calling herself ‘Nana’ to him.”

“That’s sweet.” He felt another pang of guilt.

Belle moved the little gym with its dangling toys and picked Bay up, gathering his blanket along with him. She headed for the door.

Whit stood. “Where are you going?”

She gave him a smile over her shoulder. “Cookies.”

When they reached the kitchen, they found Jefferson soldiering through his day in spite of obviously still being a bit down. He looked so pitiful that Whit invited him to help them.

“It’s been years since we’ve made Christmas cookies,” Jefferson said, appearing cheered by the idea of it, and he went on a search for cookie cutters.

Belle pulled a cookbook down from a little rack in the corner of the cabinet near the stove. “There was a sugar cookie recipe we always used,” she murmured as she flipped through.

Just about the time she found what she was looking for, Jefferson surfaced with a large set of shiny cutters collected in a storage box. He pointed to Bay and turned, disappearing for a moment, and returned with the bassinet from the living room.

“It’ll perhaps be safer all around for our Mr. Neal to have a nap away from anything potentially dangerous,” Jefferson suggested.

Whit settled his son into the bassinet, first attempting a pacifier. A soft, jingling teething ring met with more luck. It didn’t take long at all for Bay’s eyelids to grow heavy. 

Having never made cookies in his life, Whit helped by fetching and handing things to them, for the most part. Belle sent him for the flour and sugar canisters from the pantry, “To the right of the safe thing in the wall. And bring the food coloring. It should be somewhere near the sugars.”

He watched as they worked some sort of magic with flour, sugar, butter, and eggs. When it began coming together in the mixer, Belle curled her fingers over the edge of the bowl to sneak a nibble.

“Raw egg!” he protested, giving her a chastening look.

Smirking, she reached in again for another, bigger bite of dough.

He grabbed her wrist. Not holding tight, he only created enough resistance that she couldn’t get the cookie dough into her open mouth. She kept trying, her laugh a small one at first, growing as she struggled to get the dough to her lips.

Through his own laughter, Whit tried to caution her, “You’re going to give yourself salmonella!”

“I’ve always eaten cookie dough!”

“It only takes one bad egg.”

She giggled. “One bad egg to ruin the bunch?”

“That’s apples,” he replied with a grin.

“They’re pasteurized,” Jefferson said lightly as he began taking the dough from the bowl.

Belle and Whit looked at one another. He let go of her hand before she had time to change how she pulled, and she smacked the dough against her face.

He barked a laugh before he could stop himself. “I’m sorry!”

Her shoulders shaking, Belle leaned over onto the counter, and for a moment, Whit was terrified he’d actually hurt her mouth. Just as he was ready to reach out and check whether she was all right, she slid down, collapsing to the kitchen floor in the most beautiful peals of laughter. It was infectious. He squatted down, laughter making his knees feel weak. Belle took advantage of his position. Reaching up with the dough left on her fingers, she smeared it across his cheek and began laughing so hard she stopped making a sound.

Whit took her sticky hand, holding onto it. With a stuttered deep breath and a sigh, she calmed somewhat, clinging to his hand in return. Still a little punchy and breathless, they looked at one another. Everything else around Whit seemed to cease to exist. She pulled at his hand, bringing herself closer until he could feel the warmth of her breath, and his thoughts went back to the kiss they’d shared after dancing.

Bay managed to launch his teething ring over the edge of the bassinet, and it bounced on the floor with a _rattle rattle rattle_ before coming to a stop. Whit pulled back. He reached out to wipe the crumbs of dough from her face and she did the same, the warmth of her smile never wavering. Catching his free hand on the counter’s edge, he stood and brought her up with him.

Jefferson cleared his throat and side-eyed them with no small measure of amusement. “I’m going to put in a call to have the supermarket deliver decorations and icing bags. Attempt to behave yourself while I’m gone,” he said, and he pointed to Belle in warning. “Don’t eat all the dough. The intention is to have enough to cut cookies from.”

When Jefferson left the kitchen, Belle gave Whit a mischievous look. She slowly reached toward the large ball of cookie dough on the counter. Giving her a scandalized look, he blocked it with his hands. Belle bumped him with her hip and did her best to sneak her fingers past.

“Come on, one more bite,” she tried to convince him.

He blew a short breath between his teeth. “I’ve already learned not to cross the butler.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> [ _Note: The movie this fic is an AU of is a kind of mildly dark comedy romance. Realistically, there would be a lot more grief over a much longer period of time, but the time span is only about a month from the moment the main characters meet to the big happy ending. I just don’t want you guys to be disappointed when I don’t go deeeep into the grief and angst parts of this story before the happy ending launches._ ;) ]


	15. Chapter 15

Belle would absolutely have denied daydreaming, had anyone caught her. She pretended to be engrossed in the new and upcoming release list. All she managed was a slow scroll up and down the first page, aching with thoughts of Will. Dancing with him. Kissing him. Talking to him over the old photo album. Making cookies. _Kissing him._

She leaned her face into her hands on the desk. 

“Hey, there. Gonna scan those books in?” Astrid teased, coming over with a stack of pulled requests that the nursing home had called in. “Or are you hoping they’ll acquire sentience and scan themselves?”

“Give me a minute. I’m wallowing,” Belle muttered through her fingers.

Setting the books down, Astrid leaned on the desk next to her. “Which thing are you wallowing about?”

Belle lifted her head. “What do you mean, ‘which thing?’”

“I mean, are you thinking about about your sister? In which case I have hugs and sympathy,” Astrid began, “or are you thinking about Will? In which I have advice and maybe a sound shake by the shoulders.” She straightened up and illustrated on an invisible person with her hands.

“Second one.” Belle looked over at her. “Only, don’t shake me. I might throw up, the jigs my anxiety is doing with my stomach.”

“Oh, hon. Why are you worrying about it so hard?”

“I like him. Maybe more than like.”

Astrid raised her eyebrows as if she waited for more. “So?”

“So? He’s my brother-in-law,” Belle reminded her quietly. He might not be, too. She wasn’t sure whether that was better or worse. “My late sister’s husband. Who has my nephew. My sister’s husband and baby. And I might be in love with him?”

“Still not seeing that much of a problem,” Astrid told her.

“The _problem_ is what a terrible person I am for entertaining the idea of telling him about it.” Belle frowned over at her computer screen. 

“You’re not a terrible person!” Turning the desk chair, Astrid forced her attention back. “How does he seem around you? Sad? Standoffish?”

“We danced the other night.”

“Danced?”

“Slow danced. After putting Jefferson to bed drunk. It was a whole thing.”

Astrid smiled. “Ooh?”

“And kissed,” Belle said reluctantly.

The admission made Astrid light up, though. _“Ooh!”_

“And almost kissed again when we were making cookies yesterday…” 

“Now, see, that doesn’t sound like a man who would have a huge problem with you telling him how you feel.”

Belle’s frown softened a little. “Mama basically gave me her blessing.”

“What more do you need?” Astrid asked with a shake of her head.

Sighing, Belle put her face in her hands again.

Resting a hand on her back, Astrid patted comfortingly. “If you’re waiting for Lacey’s blessing, I don’t think it’s gonna happen soon.”

“Yeah,” Belle said, muffled.

“Hon, sometimes you have to take a _big_ chance. Sometimes there’s a great big canyon between you and what you want, and you don’t know if there are sharks or hell, or maybe one of those glass bridges you can’t see until you _leap.”_

Belle sat up enough to rest her elbows on the desk. It occurred to her what Astrid was alluding to. “Sorry. Occasionally I forget you left the convent for Leroy. Those are some high stakes.”

Astrid only shrugged. “Yes and no. It was hard and weird leaving behind being a nun. But then, Leroy was a sure thing. He’s my human safety net,” she said with a smile.

“Will is a good man. A good person. I’m sure of it. I feel like there’s something strange going on, though.”

“What kind of strange?”

Belle shook her head, unwilling to spread her suspicion. “I can’t say.”

“You haven’t said anything at all to Will about how you feel?” Astrid asked. “Nothing?”

“Oh, God no.” The thought gave Belle mostly metaphorical hives.

Astrid gave her a reproachful look. “Go talk to him.”

“I’ll work up to it. Astrid, it’s literally been eighteen days since Lacey died.”

“Did he kiss you back?”

Belle’s mouth hung open for a moment. He’d absolutely kissed her back. “That’s so far from the point.”

“Except maybe not,” Astrid said, entirely too smug.

“What if he looks at me and sees Lacey? What if that’s what this is all about?” Of course, that was entirely meaningless if her suspicions were true. Her head spun.

Astrid pressed her hands together and took a deep breath before informing her, “Honey. Nobody can look at you and see Lacey. I promise.”

Belle wished that she could confide the entire thing in someone. But she couldn’t without the risk of that someone reporting it or going after Will somehow. That was the last thing she wanted. 

“I can take care of the library today. If anything wild comes up I can’t handle, I’ll call. You. Go. Talk to him.” Astrid patted her and slid the stack of returned books over to herself, grabbing the scanner. “Go on. Go.”

Following a moment of quick thought and loin girding, Belle went to her office to grab her things. Astrid was right. Talking to Will was the only option. She’d just been putting it off. She would be miserable until she did something about it, and she was tired right through to her bones of being miserable.

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“Let’s go and see what Colette is up to, huh?” Whit said, dropping a half dozen kisses on his son’s cheeks and smiling at the baby’s wrinkle-faced reaction before arranging him in the carrier. “I hear she’s been asking you to call her Nana. Maybe that’d be all right. She’d be a good nana, wouldn’t she?”

He made it downstairs and walked through to the sitting room without a single wrong turn, Bay snuggled close against him. Colette sat in the armchair she seemed to favor. A stack of mail sat on the table next to her, the opened pieces in a pile on her lap.

Without glancing up, she took a few envelopes, propping them on the table. She examined a small letter with an intrigued expression.

Whit stepped over and moved the propped mail to reveal a glass of some fizzing mixed drink. It wasn’t his place, but he knew enough to understand that she wasn’t supposed to be drinking on her medications.

Taking off her reading glasses, Colette looked up at him. “Don’t tell Jefferson. He’ll start threatening to dry out the house.”

Whit gave her a look of concern.

She sighed, turning dramatically away. “Take it. Pour it out. I know.”

“Good idea,” he said, taking the drink with her permission. He went to the wet bar and poured the contents out, setting the glass in the small sink.

“How are you and my grandson doing this morning?” she asked when he went back over.

“We’re doing all right,” he said, sitting down on the sofa near her. “Nothing of much interest.”

Colette held out the envelope she was inspecting. “You’ve gotten your first letter here. Perhaps some old friends have looked you up?”

“Maybe…” He took the letter. If they were, they weren’t his friends.

Bay gave a brief, soft whimper as his father took a hand from beneath the fabric carrier. There was a plain card inside the envelope when Whit pried open the flap. Colette put her glasses back on, returning to her mail, and he was glad she didn’t watch as he opened it. The writing on the card was heavy and black, and the words there were very few, but they made his stomach turn. He slipped the card back in and stood.

“Everything all right?” Colette asked. “Is it bad news?”

“No, no, it’s-” He shook his head, needing to get away quickly. “Only junk mail. Disappointing.”

She gave him a sympathetic smile. “That is disappointing.”

“Excuse me, I forgot something upstairs.”

“Of course. See you at dinner, dear.”

Whit hurried up to the privacy of his bedroom, gently laying Bay down in the nursery crib. Standing next to his son, he pulled the card from its envelope with shaking hands.

_‘I know who you are.’_

Ink bled through from the other side. He flipped the card to read the reverse.

_‘And I know what you did.’_


	16. Chapter 16

“Will?” Belle found his bedroom door ajar. She pushed it open, stepping inside.

He hurried past her, carrying what she recognized as some of the things that arrived in the box a few days after him. Will was dressed in jeans and a pullover, both too big for his frame. He wasn’t wearing any of his new things.

“Will?” she repeated, aware that her tone changed. “What are you doing? Are you _packing?”_

“It’s time for us to go. We’ve worn out our welcome,” he said. There was an unmistakable note of panic in his voice.

Neal lay on a changing pad on the bed, cooing and gurgling, playing with one of his feet. Next to him, Will was definitely packing a bag. The diaper bag sat open, being packed, also.

“Worn out your welcome?” Belle went to him, putting her hand on his arm. “No. No such thing. Not for you and Neal.”

Will made an odd sound of distress, stuffing a heathered gold sweater into the duffel that a surprising number of concert t-shirts had been shipped in.

“You’re still welcome. Have you talked to Mama?” She turned with him, half following when he went back for more clothes. _Why_ was he leaving? “Is this about the other night? Is this about the kiss?”

His hands paused mid-reach for a blue flannel shirt. “No.”

“You can just forget about the kiss, if you want to. Pretend it never happened,” she told him though it hurt to say it, grasping for some way to stop him, to make him stay.

He shook his head. “It’s not about our kiss.” 

She saw him squeeze his eyes shut for a moment before going back to the things on the bed. Will looked around and turned to the overcoat hanging on the hook inside the closet door. He took the phone and checkbook from its pockets, stopping to look at the coat itself. After a moment of indecision, he turned away and placed the objects in his hands quite purposefully on the dresser.

“There are some things I have to take care of,” he said. “Things I can’t do here.”

“Is it family? You said you don’t have family.”

“I _don’t.”_

“Is it a job you have to get back to? Something like that?” Belle asked. He stopped moving but didn’t offer an answer. “Are you going back home?”

There was only silence. He didn’t move, didn’t speak. He just looked… utterly defeated.

“Okay. All right. It looks like you’ve made a decision,” she said carefully, not wanting him to feel pushed. Pushing him could backfire. “I want to respect that decision, but it’s an important one, and I want to help you be certain you’re going the right way with it.”

Belle went to the desk at one side of his bed, giving him room. She took her phone from her skirt pocket and sat, bringing up her notepad. “How about a pro and con list? Would that be okay? I’m pretty well known for my thorough pro and con lists…”

He didn’t say anything, and since no one _else_ was speaking, she felt a need to fill the space.

“We have column A and column B,” she began, drawing the basic diagram across her screen with a fingertip. “Column A is leaving, since that’s what you’re… in the process of. And column B is staying here with me. With us. Mama and Jefferson and… me.”

Taking a breath, she glanced up. The speed of his packing efforts had slowed. He seemed to be extending some attention in her direction.

“So, let’s see. In column A, if you leave, you’ll have no family support. No job, I think? Right? No money, since apparently you’re not taking the checkbook with you?” She typed quickly with soft blips as her thumbs touched the letters. “Now, column B. If you stay, you’ll have all of those things, if you want them. You’ll also have Mama, who loves you. Jefferson, who loves you. And, um, me, who loves you. Very much.”

Will whipped around to face her, jaw dropped, holding a snail print baby blanket limp between his hands.

“There you are.” Belle smiled, but she could feel the anxiety in it. She looked from Will back to her phone. “Where was I? Oh, yeah. One more thing for the list. Um…” She felt her throat tighten. “A proposal. From me. Me, asking you to marry me. I’m going to put that at the top, because I feel like that’s pretty big. That’s important.”

“M- marry-” He stared. “What?”

“I can erase that one,” she assured him, babbling on before she had time to dwell on his reaction. “Even without it, the balance is incredibly one-sided. Column A is pretty dire, there, but column B? Home, safety, love? Money. If you want a job - you don’t have to have one, just - we could find you anything you wanted. It doesn’t look like that difficult a decision to me. In favor of staying, I mean.”

He sat down hard on the bed. Neal squealed in response. “Did you ask me to marry you? Did that happen?”

Belle looked up at him. He’d gone a little pale. “Yeah, that happened.” 

Tucking her phone away, she went back over, resting a knee on the bed to bring herself closer to him. She cradled her palms along his jaw, searching the depths of his dark eyes, and leaned in to kiss him before her nerve failed her. He kissed her back. Her heart pounded so that she could hear the rush of it in her ears.

“Fuck…” he breathed when she pulled away.

She ran her teeth over her bottom lip. “Not the answer I imagined. In either direction.”

Will met her eyes. There was something so helpless in them that it made her hurt for him.

Belle gave him another, shorter kiss. “Don’t answer tonight. Think about it. The whole list. Stay, please? Think? And say yes tomorrow.” Smiling, she stepped back and looked to Neal. “Do me a favor and talk to your papa. Tell him what a great life we’d all have together.”

She touched Will’s face before backing her way out of the room. Leaving, hoping he would think and _stay,_ she left the door the way he had it before she’d gone barging in.


	17. Chapter 17

Whit sat on Storybrooke’s only bus bench, an advertisement for Any Given Sundae faded and peeling behind him. He kept Bay bundled up close and warm beneath a heavy gray cardigan that belonged to Will. As for himself, he was cold. He’d seen how much the overcoat cost, and he couldn’t bring himself to take it. 

Allowing the French family to do so much for him made him thief enough without taking things they’d bought. He could justify taking some necessities for Bay. He had to keep his son safe. Belle was right about one thing - they did honestly love his son. But Bay hadn’t been deceiving them since setting foot under their roof. No, it was his father who had done that.

“Bay, I hope someday you find comfort in the fact that no matter how hard you try, you could never destroy your life as badly as I have mine,” Whit murmured as he checked on his son.

The bus pulled up, slowing to a stop just ahead of the bench he occupied. Only a couple of people disembarked and waited for the driver to fetch their luggage from the compartment underneath before disappearing into the night.

Whit tucked the sides of the cardigan close around Bay again. “I’m so sorry,” he whispered. “I’m doing the right thing this time, though. I think.”

There was a cluck of the tongue and a put-upon sigh. He knew those sounds.

Looking up, he found Jefferson standing there eyeballing him, hands clad in driving gloves laced neatly together, the overcoat he’d left in the bedroom draped over one arm. When the butler opened his mouth and took a deep breath, Whit expected criminations, scolding, but what came out was far from it.

“Hans, the man with whom I was involved. The one whose fallout you and Miss Belle helped to clear up,” Jefferson began in an even tone laden with a carefully controlled dignity. “I learned that his parents cut him off his inheritance when they found he was involved in a number of unsavory activities. Afterward, Hans made a life of conning individuals close to wealthy families to help him in stealing money from them. Individuals such as myself. He believed I would help him - or could be forced to help him - do the same to the French family. I refused, notified his family, and notified the authorities.”

Jefferson took another breath, his face creasing before he spoke again. “Then I told Mrs. French. It was the… second most difficult thing I’ve ever had to do. Without rehashing it, let me simply say that she understood. Mrs. French seems always to understand even the worst of things.”

Whit looked up at him, speechless. He wasn’t sure why he was being given this information. They’d accepted that the person Jefferson had been seeing was terrible, no questions asked. Unless he suspected what Whit had been doing and compared them. The idea that he was being likened to the bastard who had hurt the man in front of him so badly made his soul shrink back a little. Before he could figure out a response, Jefferson spoke again.

“What, may I ask, do you think you’re doing?” There was no teasing or cheek to it. Jefferson was absolutely disappointed and put-upon, looking at him.

“Please, don’t,” Whit pled. “Leave me alone. Let me go. You have no idea what-”

Jefferson lifted a silencing hand. “Why are you running away?”

Whit sputtered a bit before he managed, “I’m not _running._ I’m just leaving. Quickly.”

“Was that meant to be funny? Because I’m not laughing.” Jefferson took a couple of steps closer, into the streetlight. “Where the hell do you think you’re going?”

“I appreciate what you’re trying to do. I really do. But this whole thing is over.” He looked away, patting Bay through the heavy knit. “There are things, if anyone dug them up, it would ruin the family. I won’t let that happen.”

Jefferson gave a dry laugh. “Do you honestly think you’re the only one with a checkered past?” Scoffing, he took one more step forward. He placed the overcoat on Whit’s lap and reached for the duffel and diaper bag that sat on top of it, walking off with them.

“No! We need those!” In a surge of panic, Whit got up to go after him.

Turning to face him very closely now, Jefferson made him stop short to keep from colliding. “Men in my past situation end up dead in gutters, one way or another. I did things I wish I could wipe out of my memory. Then I met Mrs. French. She got help for me, gave me a job. She _saved my life_ and she hasn’t once held it over my head. They’re both far stronger than you think.”

Whit let his hand not cradled beneath his son drop to his side. “You don’t understand. What I’ve done-” 

“I understand what it’s like to want your child safe at any cost, no matter how you came about them.” Jefferson leaned to bring his face nearer Whit’s, his words quiet and full of steel. “If bad things are going to happen, then let them happen here, where you’re loved and have people to brace you. Frenches stick together, and whatever else you might be, you are a French now.”

Whit shook his head, miserable. “That’s it, Jefferson. I’m _not.”_

Jefferson let him take the bags from his hand and go back toward the bus, where a handful of people were boarding. “You listen to me. No, I don’t know you. No, I don’t know where you came from. What I do know is that you are _just_ as much a French as I am.”

At the bus steps, Whit stopped, suddenly uncertain. The driver looked down at him, one hand on the door closer. “On or off, my dude? Decide.”

After a long moment of staring into the bus, Whit stepped back. Closing the door with a bang, the driver left him where he stood. His son cradled against him, bags held tightly in the opposite hand, he wasn’t at all sure what the right thing was anymore. But if Jefferson was right, if Belle and Colette would stand with him when everything crashed in… Was that too much hope?

Jefferson’s hand rested on his shoulder. “Let’s go home.”

The butler made him put on the overcoat and took his bags once again. Whit walked slowly after him, hoping that he wasn’t making the wrong choice for _everyone._

“How did you find me?” he asked when he reached the open car door.

“Mrs. French saw you go. She asked that I make certain you were safe,” Jefferson told him with a smile. “This is me making certain you’re safe.”

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Whit felt as much comfort as apprehension, going back up the drive to the French estate. How would he explain it to them, his up and leaving the way he had, having to be fetched back by Jefferson? If they didn’t want him there, though, Colette wouldn’t have sent Jefferson for him. He did his best to keep that in mind.

That comfort was yanked away as they approached the house. An ambulance sat near the steps, its rear doors thrown wide open.

“Oh, God…” Jefferson murmured from the front seat, braking so hard that shell clattered against the underside of the car.

Whit struggled with the carseat’s safety straps before he could get out with Bay. By the time he made it inside, Jefferson was gone. 

Lizzie, waiting in the foyer, held her hands out for his son. “I’ll take care of him, sir.”

Whit gave him over and ran upstairs, passing a pair of paramedics on the way. There on the landing stood Belle. She looked as though she’d been crying, and his heart sank.

Her eyes widened when she saw him. He got to her and she wrapped her arms around him so tightly his ribs ached, sobbing into his shoulder.

“I was afraid you were gone,” she said, half muffled.

“No, I- Of course I’m not gone.” Whit hugged her tightly. “What’s happened? Colette?”

She leaned back but didn’t quite let go of him. “Mama had an angina attack. Her nitroglycerin took longer than usual to work, but I’d already called 911, so I talked her into letting them check her.”

“But she’s all right?”

“She’s… okay. She argued with the paramedics about being dehydrated, but she finally let them give her a saline IV. Her doctor is coming by in the morning.”

He nodded along with her explanation. After spending another moment in his arms, she pulled back enough to pat her hands against his chest before moving away from him. Belle led him the rest of the way upstairs and down the hallway to her mother’s sprawling, blue and silvery-gray bedroom suite.

Colette visibly sighed when she saw him. “You’re home. Thank heavens. And Jefferson.”

The butler sat on the edge of an armchair near the bed, concern still heavy in his features. “I merely presented my case.”

Whit had a sickening flash of his mother at her most ill. He’d been all of four or five years old, but he so clearly remembered his mother slowly disappearing. Cancer took her by degrees, smothering her light until one day she was gone. He hadn’t allowed himself to think how much Colette reminded him of his own mother until he saw her slight form there, sitting up, tucked into fancy covers.

She beckoned to him and he went over, taking her hand when she held it out to him. Coletted pulled him down to hug him, then patted the bed next to her.

“Sit down, dear,” she said, brooking no refusal.

Belle walked over, bending to hug Jefferson about the neck. “Thank you for bringing Will back.”

Over her shoulder, Jefferson gave him a look filled with meaning. “I feared returning if I didn’t have him with me.”

“Belle, darling, would you go and make me some tea?” Colette asked sweetly. “The chamomile. Nice and strong. Jefferson, go along and show her where to find the strainer.”

Her intention couldn’t have been clearer if she’d said outright that she wanted to speak to Whit about his little jaunt. They stepped out of the room without question.

“Take your shoes off, bring your feet up, and sit properly,” she told him once the door shut behind her daughter and Jefferson. “Apparently we need a chat, you and I.”

“Are you-” he started to ask, then thought better of it. “I know you aren’t _all right,_ but-”

“I’m fine enough. If it weren’t for this damned bloody mortal body, I’d live forever,” Colette half teased. She kissed his cheek the way he pressed kisses to Bay’s. “What do you have to say for yourself, young man?”

He was a bit shamefaced. “You know I don’t fit here.”

“Dear, no one fits in here,” she informed him.

“You fit,” he said. “You’re the foundation of the place.”

“No.” Colette grinned, but the expression had a weariness to it. “Would you like to know what I was doing when I met my husband? I was waitressing in a topless pub in London.”

She could have told him she’d been living on the moon and he couldn’t have been more floored. “You never.”

“This, That, and Other Things,” she said, and he got the feeling she enjoyed his shock. “I met Belle and Lacey’s father and fell in love. Madly. I fit into his world like an alley cat amongst Persians. So I incorporated the parts I wanted into my life here, and as for the rest, I made them fit me.”

“I can’t do that,” he said, his fingers twisting in the edge of the cardigan he wore.

“You most certainly can. You can accomplish anything. You’ve set off some spark in Belle I thought I would never see.” She patted his knee. “Tell me, why did you _really_ run away, William?”

He couldn’t bring himself to tell her everything. Not even about the threatening notecard in the mail. “Belle asked me to marry her,” he whispered.

Colette gave a soft and exceptionally pleased, “Oh…” and if he didn’t know better, he’d have said her smile was downright proud. “She doesn’t waste time. Always had an impetuous tilt, that one, if not as strong as her sister’s. Do you not want to?”

“No, I- I do. I would. I-” He stumbled over his words and forced himself to slow. “I want to. But I can’t.”

“William, dear,” she began a bit sternly. “Lacey is gone. I know it hurts. I’ve lost a spouse, and I’ve lost her, and I _know_ it hurts. It always will, to some degree. Holding your life back because you feel guilty about moving forward will only hurt you both further.”

Whit looked down at his hands, pulling at a loose thread. 

“Do you love Belle?” she asked.

“So much I can’t-” He shook his head. “There aren’t words.”

“Then for goodness sake, marry her. The sooner the better.” She lifted a hand to pet his hair, damp from snow. “The Frenches need new blood like ours if they’re to survive this ridiculous world. And I need you to promise me something.”

He raised his head to look at her. “What?”

“Don’t take my grandson away from me again?” Colette asked, beneath her kindness quite obviously upset by the entire situation.

Whit gave her a sheepish smile. Guilt from all directions seemed to gnaw at him. Maybe it _was_ better if they stay until something inevitably dragged him away kicking and screaming. 

“We aren’t going anywhere, if it’s up to me,” he promised.


	18. Chapter 18

“Belle? Where are you going?” Colette asked after them as they attempted to sneak away from the dining room unnoticed. “We haven’t finished half of the planning!”

Belle didn’t answer, and Whit followed her example as she took him down one hallway and then another, his hand in hers. She finally stopped to duck into a double-doored room. When she flipped the light on to take them out of plunging darkness, he found they were in a sprawling library complete with a ladder and nice places to sit. To one side, there were stacks, not a single shelf empty that he could see from where he stood.

“I didn’t realize this was here,” he said, looking around. He’d never seen so many books in one place.

She tugged him toward an oversized armchair tucked into a corner on the side of the library with only its walls lined in shelves. “You should do more exploring of the house.”

“If I go exploring, I may never make it out,” Whit remarked. “There’s a lot of house.”

“I’ll make you a map,” she teased, half parking herself in his lap when he sat in the chair. “For example, this is the library, and this is my favorite seat in it.”

He wrapped his arms around her, holding her close. “I had a feeling about the chair.”

“I wasn’t talking about the chair.” Belle’s lips pursed with amusement at her own little quip.

Her meaning hit him and the back of his neck went warm. “I’m your favorite seat?”

With a smile and a nod of her head, she put an arm around his shoulders, her other hand coming up to rest in the space between his shoulder and neck. Her fingers and palm were warm through the fabric of his shirt. 

He was slowly growing accustomed to Belle seeking out kisses from him. Before her, Milah was the only woman he’d kissed more than once, but he’d learned how different it was, the way a kiss felt that was making do versus one truly wanted. Belle’s kisses were heated, and they grew more so the more she gave him. 

There was a knock at the door. Belle leaned away from him, wiping her mouth delicately with fingertips, and gave Whit a regretful look as she left his lap. “Come in?”

Greta stepped into the library. “Mrs. French asks if you’ve had enough ‘necking time’ and requests your returned presence in the dining room,” the young maid said, clearly repeating Colette verbatim.

Snickering softly, Belle told her, “Please let Mama know we’re on our way.”

Colette met them at the door with a mock-up of the wedding invitation. “They’ll need to be sent out immediately,” she said. “We’re pushing the polite timing as it is, but a few slightly greased palms, and I’ve been assured that if we get the approval in, the printer will have them in the post by midday tomorrow.”

A pair of deep green pine branches stretched across the invitation’s cream background. The seasonally appropriate spatter of snow fell across a black inset with soft white calligraphy.

_Colette Eileen French  
requests the honor of your presence  
at the marriage of her daughter  
Belle Lucia French  
and  
William Michael Scarlet-French  
December 24, 2019  
at the French Estate  
Storybrooke, Maine 04815_

Seeing it in writing drove it home once more. They didn’t even know his name. Would the wedding be legal without it? He nodded, though, looking to Belle.

“It’s beautiful. Just perfect.” She smiled brightly, taking his hand to squeeze it in hers.

Whit went to check on his son in the little table bouncer. Her mother went back to hover over to the planner, who sat right down at her laptop to send the approval through.

“Thank goodness for modern technology,” Colette said with a sigh. “I don’t know what we’d do if they weren’t handling printing, post, and all.”

Belle caught a hand around her mother’s arm, encouraging her toward the nearest dining chair. “Mama, you need to sit down.”

Colette waved her off. “I’m fine.”

“Two days ago I called paramedics because I was terrified you were dying.”

“Tsk. You exaggerate.”

Belle fixed her with a look that said she wasn’t exaggerating in the least. “Please, sit down.”

With a bit of a huff, her mother went around to sit in a chair between the planner and florist, placing herself at the center for ease of access. Jefferson stood back a bit, though he watched the goings-on with careful interest. It felt nice, Whit decided, the way Belle and Colette asked his opinions on this and that, but he had little clue what to contribute when they looked to him. Everything they had laid out was beautiful. Maybe if his thoughts jarring against one another with guilt weren’t such a distraction.

He loved Belle to perhaps an unreasonable degree. He wanted to marry her, even quick as it was all falling together. But he didn’t want to marry her like this - in the middle of a thousand lies just writhing to get out into the open.

They’d barely settled upon white roses and lavender when Lizzie ushered in a pair of men carrying large, shallow white boxes, each emblazoned with _Merlin’s Bakery_ on the lid. “Mrs. French, the cake designer is here.”

The older of the two - a handsome black man with a big, easy smile - began setting up a space at the end of the dining table. He opened the three boxes to reveal masterfully designed cake samples.

“I’ve brought some of everything, one way or another, Mrs. French,” the cake designer said with a light Brummie lilt. 

Whit watched as the man placed a couple of small silver forks next to each miniature cake. As he started to turn his attention back to the details that Belle and Colette discussed, he noticed how Jefferson’s attention caught on the cake designer. Looking between them, he found the other man casting quick glances at Jefferson, as well.

He nudged Belle, who looked up and made a soft sound of interest, seeing what he saw. She, in turn, took a step nearer Jefferson and gave him a nudge in the side.

“I’m busy here,” she told him. “Would you go over and help decide on the cake?”

Jefferson didn’t have to be asked twice. 

Belle tugged at Whit’s sleeve then. “You go help, too,” she told him with a grin, adding more quietly, “And pay attention. I want to know everything.”

He did as she said, glad to have something akin to an actual task. The man with whom Jefferson was trading warm looks introduced himself as Merlin Ambrose, owner, designer, and baker, before he launched into detail about the cakes. Whit listened. Jefferson hung on every word.

Whittling down the choices by half fairly quickly, the three of them discussed the merits of what was left. On the table stretched the samples demolished by tasting. With the designer looking on, Whit had tasted most of them twice, trying to decide what Belle would enjoy best from his memory of what she’d said and eaten since he arrived. 

“Lemon cake, lemon myrtle icing, strawberry curd filling. My second in command will get started as soon as he gets my message,” Mr. Ambrose told them as he entered the decision on his tablet. “And did we decide on decoration?”

Whit swallowed with the aid of the sparkling water Mr. Ambrose supplied. “The roses,” he said, pointing to what was left of one of the samples. The small cake had originally been covered with a swath of deep red roses, not that one could tell it now.

The designer gave him a nod without looking up. “We’ll have it ready in plenty of time.”

With everything decided, Mr. Ambrose’s assistant began cleaning up and closing boxes. Whit looked to Jefferson, who still stole glances at the cake designer as though he’d never chatted anyone up before. Stretching a leg over, Whit bumped the butler’s shoe with the toe of his own, and gave a sharp glance to Mr. Ambrose and back again. At first, Jefferson looked as though he meant to argue, but he seemed to brace himself.

When the other man closed his tablet and looked up, Jefferson smiled. “Mr. Ambrose,” he began with a rather stunning coyness, “do you have plans after this?”

The cake designer grinned as though he’d been waiting. “That depends on what you have in mind, _Mr._ Milliner.”

Whit got up from his chair as unobtrusively as he could. By now, Bay would be getting hungry, Belle needed an update on the cake, and Jefferson could use a bit of privacy for flirtation’s sake.

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The engagement-slash-rehearsal party had live music. Colette wouldn’t have it any other way. From the dais at the far end of the ballroom that Whit hadn’t known existed until they discussed having the party there, a chamber ensemble played. They alternated between slow songs and Christmas carols, and Belle had Whit dancing through most of them.

It was, without a doubt, one of the most wonderful days he’d experienced in his life. Dancing with Belle, the way she looked at him, it felt like a fairy tale. He fought to set aside the nagging in his conscience and just enjoy it.

Whit looked over to his son. Colette kept Bay with her, outfitted to match both his papa’s suit and Belle’s party dress. She was chatting with an older gentleman and watching them at the same time, while Jefferson stayed nearby to keep an eye on her so that she wouldn’t overdo herself.

The sweet, sparkling song they danced to wound down, and they slowed to a stop, still holding onto one another. “One more,” Belle said again, as she’d said the last half dozen songs, and she pinched her lower lip between her teeth because she knew it.

Whit felt a hand on his shoulder. He looked, expecting someone to ask for a dance with Belle.

Smiling as though butter wouldn’t melt in her mouth, Milah looked back at him with an all too familiar cool blue stare. His blood ran cold.

“Aren’t you a lucky lady?” Milah said, eyeing Belle before sliding her eyes back to him.

Belle, not allowing herself to be thrown, asked a polite, “Have we met?”

“I’m afraid we haven’t had the pleasure. A friend of a friend, that sort of thing.” Purposefully bumping Whit, Milah offered her hand. “Milah Winter. Of the Hartford Winters. I’m so glad to hear that your mother is feeling better.”

“Thank you…” Belle shook her hand, but he knew her well enough by now to see the confusion around the corners of her eyes.

“May I cut in on this dance?” Milah asked sweetly, and Whit saw a flash of the person she’d pretended to be when they met.

Belle looked to him. He gave a slight shrug. There was nothing he wanted less than Milah touching him, but saying so would create a scene he was unwilling to make.

“All right, then. One dance.” Belle gave him a smile, straightening his tie. “The rest of his dances tonight are mine.”

Milah winked at her. “You might have to catch me to get him back.”

The first strains of ‘Have Yourself a Merry Little Christmas’ wafted through the room and Belle stepped away. Milah placed herself close and took his hand, forcing him into a dance.

“What are you doing here?” he asked, not quite looking her in the eye.

She smirked. “Oh, my, _have_ we met before, then?”

Whit stopped, trying to pull his hand free of hers. “Let go of me. You need to leave.”

But she refused to let go. _“Whitney?_ Is something wrong, _Whitney?_ Hm?”

He glanced around to see whether anyone heard. Whit went on dancing when she pulled at him, to keep her quiet. “Why are you here?”

Milah put on a shocked expression. “I thought you died in that fire! And my darling son, I thought he’d burned up!”

If he didn’t know her so well, he might have imagined she was being genuine.

“That _does_ something to a person, Whitney. I _mourned.”_ There was a hard glint in her eye that said she did no such thing. “It made me take a look at my life. I went to a network marketing conference. I’m selling essential oils now.”

“That’s great,” he said, trying hard to get along, avoiding provoking her. “I’m sure you’re doing well with it.”

“Then, about a month ago, I’m looking around Insta, and I happen across a picture,” Milah told him, her smirk returning, nastier than ever. “A birth announcement from the French family. Imagine my absolute _shock_ at how much their new son-in-law looks like the cowardly little bastard I knew once upon a time.”

Whit went still on the dance floor. “You sent that card?”

“Well, I could hardly ignore the announcement. That would have been impolite.”

“Fine. Your threat worked. What do you want?”

She reached up with the hand she’d clamped on his shoulder, giving his cheek a quick, sharp slap enough to make him flinch. “Why are you so nervous, Whit? I only want to applaud you on this wonderful life you’ve stolen.”

“I haven’t… stolen…” he began, but the lie trailed off into nothing.

“Come on. It’s not like the guy that bit it was going to need his spot here anymore, right? And oh, my God, suckering the girl’s own _sister_ into marrying you? Absolutely ingenious. I’m not sure even I could have pulled off something that depraved.” She laughed. “I never thought you had the balls to pull this kind of con.”

Horrified and choking on apprehension, he understood. “You want something. You wouldn’t be here otherwise.”

“How suspicious you are! And when I only wanted to wish you well.” Milah broke away from him, starting to walk away. Snapping her fingers, she turned back, stepping uncomfortably close again. “Actually, there is one _tiny_ thing. My son. What role am I, as Bay’s _real_ mother, to have in this performance?”

Whit’s mouth fell open. ‘Role,’ as though she could jump in and out of Bay’s life like a character in a movie. His fear cracked in the face of her bringing Bay into her scheme, whatever the hell it was.

“Nothing,” he bit off. “You ceased to have _any_ ‘role’ in his life when you put us out to freeze to death.”

She smiled, as though his response were precisely what she wanted. “Would you prefer I have a chat with your mother-in-law? Because I can do that just as easily,” she said, her nonchalance nauseating. “How do you think her heart would handle hearing all the facts?”

He gritted his teeth and asked her yet again, “What do you want?”

Milah reached into her cleavage and brought out a matchbook. “My room number is inside. Come by tomorrow. And bring my son,” she said, slipping it into his jacket pocket.

“I don’t want you near him.”

“When have I ever given you the impression that I care what you want?”

In a flare of anger, he spat, “Unlike every casting director you cross paths with, never.”

“You know I have no problem hitting you in public. Imagine the questions it would raise among your fancy new friends here.” She smiled toothily. “Tomorrow. Bring my son. Or I _will_ fuck up your life so badly you’ll never see sky again, much less that kid.”

“I’ll be there,” he whispered, the fight taken out of him.

“There you go. I always could get cooperation out of you one way or another.” Milah patted his chest. He tilted away from her. “If you’d looked like this when we were together, I might have kept you around longer.” She looked him up and down in appraisal, then twisted her mouth in distaste. “Mm. No. Probably not.”

She at last walked away without wheeling back to twist the knife again. Whit’s heart lurched in his chest. What the hell was he meant to do?

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Jefferson turned to Colette. She looked right back at him from the comfortable arm chair he’d had brought out for her to rest in over the course of the party, rubbing her grandson’s back.

He bent, speaking so that only his employer could hear. “I don’t like her.”

“Nor do I,” Colette agreed. “I believe the look on William’s face says it all, yes?”

“Indeed.” He watched as the woman in the black sequined dress made a sashaying path out, cutting through the middle of the dancefloor. “We don’t know her, do we, ma’am?”

“We do not. But you’re going to find out,” she told him.

He gave her a single, decisive nod. “Yes, ma’am. I certainly am.”


	19. Chapter 19

In weather so cold it stung his cheeks, so early that the house wasn’t yet awake, Whit called a taxi to meet him at the end of the drive. As per demand, he took Bay with him. The baby was bundled up and cuddled close in the carrier inside his coat, where they could both stay warm.

Whit handed the matchbook that Milah had given him through the partition. “I need to go there, please?”

The cabbie gave him a skeptical look. “You sure about that? Not the greatest area.”

“Believe me,” Whit muttered, “I wish I didn’t have to.”

Nearly an hour’s drive took him a good bit outside of town, into a small city that felt like an entirely different world after spending time in Storybrooke. The motel reminded him of the place he had to live with Bay after she kicked them out. Run down, filthy, goings on in the parking lot that made his skin crawl. It didn’t do his feelings toward her any favors, the similarities.

It took her so long to answer when he knocked, he started to wonder if he had the wrong room. When Milah did finally open the door, she wore nothing but a bathrobe. 

“Could you put on something more… more?” he asked, making certain his eyes remained above her shoulders.

“It’s my room,” she said, walking away. “Besides, you’re not in any position to make demands.”

Whit tracked her for a few seconds before going in. He shut the door and stayed near it, hoping whatever she wanted would be over sooner than later.

After muting the TV, she turned to him with her hands out. “Let me see my son.”

He bit his tongue. He was standing between her and the only way out. She couldn’t exactly spirit him away. Bay fussed a little when he took the baby from the fabric carrier, and he gently shushed _his_ son.

Milah made a sound of disgust. “You know you’re spoiling him, carrying him around in that thing,” she told him, taking Bay and moving immediately out of Whit’s reach. “They tried to sell me on that sling bullshit at those hospital, bonding, all that nonsense. It just makes for whiny kids.”

“I’m aware of your opinion,” he replied, unable to keep the bitterness from his voice. “Good thing it isn’t your decision.”

She grinned. “Oh, it’s not? Could be.”

Bay began whimpering, twisting in her grasp.

“Why did you want us here?” Whit asked, hoping to hurry her along.

“Looks like he’s going to have my nose. Thank _God,_ right, kid?” She laughed.

Milah flopped him impatiently from one arm to the other and he started crying in earnest. When he arched with distress, Whit moved to take him, his son’s cries making him hurt. She turned to keep the baby from Whit, elbowing him in the ribs. Bay only cried harder.

She looked at Bay, curling her lip in distaste. “What’s wrong with him?”

“There is nothing wrong with him.” Whit only narrowly stopped himself from saying, _he can tell there’s something wrong with you._

“He won’t stop _crying,”_ she said accusatorily.

He wanted so badly to take his son away from her. “He doesn’t like being jiggled that hard.”

“Bullshit,” Milah snapped. “Babies can’t tell. They just like being moved.”

Whit rubbed his hands over his face. “What do you want? You have some kind of scheme, right? What is it this time?”

She looked over her shoulder at him. “What if I’m having second thoughts?”

He froze, his heart sinking. “What do you mean, ‘second thoughts?’”

“My poor son, caught in the middle of your money con. He’d grow up never knowing who he really is. Never knowing his mother. What makes you think I didn’t bring you here so I could take him home with me?” She smirked, squeezing Bay close despite how he cried. “If I sued for custody, I’d win hands down. They rarely turn down a mother’s custody suit. Especially when the father is exploiting a grieving, public darling of a family like the Frenches.”

Whit’s stomach turned, waves of hot and cold running through him with her threat.

She grabbed Bay’s face between her finger and thumb, making him shriek. “Aww, your daddy would never see you again, would he? No, he wouldn’t! Can you say ‘twenty-five to life?’”

“I’ll give you anything you want,” Whit told her, his head spinning with the terror that he would never have his son in his arms again.

“Yeah. Figured that.” She looked at him. “The whole problem with the custody thing is all I get is the kid.”

He took the checkbook Colette gave him from his coat pocket. “How much?”

“Hundred thousand,” she said, not missing a beat. “You owe me compensation, the way I see it. I haven’t been able to so much as get an audition after having the kid. I had to find another job.”

“You mentioned. I’m sure having a baby is what’s kept you from winning any roles, yeah.” He leaned over the dresser where the television sat, taking out a pen to write the check.

Milah laid the baby down on the bed and hovered over Whit until he got the check signed. She snatched it from his hand as soon as he had it torn from the perforation.

He went quickly to Bay and picked him up. It took moments for his son to stop crying, only hiccuping breaths and whimpers lingering as he calmed. Whit rubbed his back, tucking him into the carrier once more and pulling the fabric around him.

Admiring the check, Milah laughed. “‘William Scarlet-French.’ That’s cute.” She folded the piece of paper and stuck it in her bathrobe pocket. “Thanks. Now that I think of it, though, a hundred is nowhere in the _vicinity_ of enough reparations. But I have an idea.”

“Milah-”

“Shut up and listen.”

Whit took the checkbook from the dresser and put it away, having no intention of writing her another.

“You’ll like my plan. In it, we both get what we want.” She sat down on the end of the bed. “Don’t you want to hear?”

He looked away from the way her robe slid open. “No. I’m leaving now.”

Leaning forward, she screamed at him, _“Do you want to hear my fucking plan, Whitney?”_

Bay began crying again, and Whit pulled his coat around the baby as well as he could. He took a step back from her, rattled, himself. “Fine. What is your plan?”

“That’s better.” She smiled as though nothing at all had happened. “You’ll take _our_ son out for… I don’t know. Some air. A walk. Visit some restaurant with a playground, whatever rich people do. Someone will show up and kidnap him. Don’t worry, I have someone in mind. They’ll make it look real, knock you out, draw blood. Your new family’ll fork over a couple million, easy. We’ll arrange the dropoff, you get the kid, and I get my compensation for popping him out in the first place.”

Whit stared at her in gaping horror. “If you come near us again, I’ll call the police.”

“And I’ll tell them it was your plan,” she replied easily. “What other reason would you have to give me a hundred thousand dollars? Paid with a forged check, at that. The charges stack up.”

He shook his head. “I’m not going to hurt Belle and Colette.”

“Not even to keep that?” she asked, nodding to the baby.

“What if I just take off?”

“Then I’ll find you and take the kid, anyway. See how that works? My boyfriend has connections.”

“You don’t even _want_ him. You never did,” Whit pointed out.

She smiled. “That doesn’t make him any less mine.”

“It would kill Colette. Her heart. Any of this, it would kill her.”

“Everybody dies sometime.”

He’d finally - perhaps too slowly - learned that she was a terror of a human being, but this was beyond even what he imagined of her. “We’re leaving.”

“So?” Milah prompted. “Text me and let me know where you’ll be around noon tomorrow.”

“I’m getting married tomorrow,” he breathed, though now he had doubts as to whether it would happen at all.

She gave him a slow blink. “What’s your point?”


	20. Chapter 20

Pacing around the downstairs with his son in his arms, Whit almost _wished_ that someone would happen across him and ask what was the matter. The house was still quiet. He walked through the foyer and realized sunlight was beginning to color the stained glass at either side of the front door. It didn’t seem possible that dawn was just breaking.

He took Bay upstairs to settle him in the crib, crossing back to the bed to sit where he could see his son sleeping. _His_ son. The idea of Milah taking Bay sent his heart pounding, near panic. She would do it. She would take his son from him for the pure spite of it. And she didn’t care who she hurt along the way.

Leaning forward, he put his face in his hands, and he made the worst decision he’d ever had to come to.

Whit went to the crib and spent a few moments watching his son breathe. He touched Bay’s growing curls before putting his coat back on and going downstairs. Jefferson or one of the maids would be up soon with a warm bottle. His intention was to return as soon as possible, but in the event of… anything keeping him from it, his son wouldn’t be alone for long.

When he went to the kitchen, Greta was on her hands and knees, half climbed into a bottom cupboard in search of something. He stepped unseen into the pantry. Moving the flour and sugar canisters aside, he looked at the small safe built into the wall there. The only way in was via a number pad, and he had a single chance. There was just one set of numbers he knew that might be the code. If it were anything else, he was out of luck.

He touched the small chrome buttons. Zero-four-one-eight. 

The lock disengaged and he almost shook with the relief that flooded through him. Belle and Lacey’s birthday. He didn’t know whether Jefferson set it or one of their parents, but he silently blessed them for being sentimental.

Inside, on top of a small stack of documents and a couple of jewelry cases, there sat a Walther PPK. He’d figured there would be a gun in the safe when he saw it. There were none in the rest of the house, but no one with so much to lose would just not have something for protection. Taking it, he slipped it into his pocket before closing the safe and putting the canisters back. 

He didn’t plan to use it. He didn’t plan to so much as take off the safety. All he needed was Milah to give back the check and swear she’d leave them alone. All of them.

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“Thank you,” he said as his second cabbie of the day pulled up in front of the motel. Whit paid her, tipping generously. “No need to wait.”

He made sure the taxi was gone before he knocked on Milah’s door. No answer. The television blared so loudly that he could hear it outside. Whit knocked harder to get above the noise, and when she still didn’t come to the door, he tried the knob, finding it unlocked. 

The lights were off and the curtains drawn tight when he went in. Only the TV flashing garishly illuminated the room. Milah sat on the bed, leaning against the headboard, not taking her eyes off the screen to look at him. And wasn’t _that_ familiar. He glanced to the TV to see what had her attention. There was some terrible reality show on, two women in evening gowns near physically fighting over a man in a tuxedo. No, her behaving as though he didn’t exist wasn’t odd in the least.

What was odd was the rest. She wore a short lace nightie, her hair combed and curled, a far cry from the way she’d looked when he left earlier in the morning.

“We’re going to have a calm talk about this plan of yours,” Whit said, pulling the gun from his coat pocket with a shaking hand. “There’s not going to be any kidnapping or hostage ransom, Milah. What _is_ going to happen is this. You’re going to return that check to me now, and then you’re going to leave. You’re going to leave and neither Bay nor I will _ever_ see you or anyone you pal around with again. Got that?”

Milah didn’t respond. He frowned, looking from her to the television. She didn’t so much as have the decency to acknowledge him. 

“Look at me, damn you.” Keeping his eyes on her, Whit stepped sideways to the TV and turned it off.

The room dropped into almost complete darkness, only slivers of daylight showing around the curtain edges. Still she said nothing. He raised the gun, training it on her, and went to the nightstand to turn on the lamp.

At first, he could only think she’d spilled something down the front of her nightie.

“Milah-” As he said her name again, he knew.

Reeling away from her with instinctive horror, he stumbled, falling backward. It took him a second to understand that the earsplitting sound that followed was the gun going off. The bullet fired high into the wall, near the ceiling. So much for the safety.

He couldn’t breathe. Milah was dead. There was so much blood. And he couldn’t breathe.

The motel room door slammed back into the wall. There stood Belle, surrounded by light.

Her eyes went to him before anything else. “Will?”

“I didn’t!” he gasped, not even questioning what she was doing there. “I meant to scare her, make her go away! I didn’t do this!”

She flicked a look around the room before closing and locking the door. “Give me the gun.”

Whit looked at it, surprised that it was still in his hand. He held it out to her in shock.

“You’ve had your gloves on the entire time?” she asked.

He nodded. “Yeah. Came in with them.”

Taking the gun, Belle clicked the safety on and pulled up the hem of her coat to wipe it all over anyway before putting it into her coat pocket. “You should’ve told me there was some kind of problem,” she said to him, gesturing hurriedly at him to get up.

“I didn’t kill her.” Somehow he got to his feet. He wasn’t sure how. “Belle- I- I-”

She waved quieting hands at him. “I believe you.”

He stammered to a stop, but his mouth remained open in shock that she did. “H- how did you know I was here?”

“I’ve been parked across the street for hours.”

“How did you know?”

“Jefferson _might_ have followed her when she left the party last night.” Belle’s nose wrinkled. “I was coming to see what she was about.”

Whit shook his head. “What? Why?”

She gave him an unmistakably sarcastic look. “You weren’t fooling anyone. As soon as you saw her face, we all knew something was wrong.”

He looked back at Milah - a mistake, and it made his jaw clench with nausea. “Did you…?”

“No!”

“If you didn’t and I didn’t-”

“We need to call the police,” Belle said, sounding far too sure of that.

Whit was hesitant to contradict her. If she believed him, of course the police would be her next thought. He was fairly certain they wouldn’t trust him as much as she did, though.

Finally, he whispered, “I’m not sure that’s wise.”

She chewed on her bottom lip for a moment, thinking. “Yeah. Let’s get out of here, then. If I heard the gun go off, other people did, too.”

“Wait. There’s something,” he said, casting around.

He found her robe in the bathroom. The pockets were empty. Her purse sat on the nightstand, and it was the obvious place. Fear crawled through him. He’d never been so close to a dead body. The wild idea that she could reach out and grab him slid into his thoughts, and the visceral need to get away screamed through him. He rifled quickly through her purse. It wasn’t there, either. 

Belle turned the lamp off. “Come on. We have to go. If someone else calls the police…”

He nodded, following her out to her car. It didn’t seem terribly likely, anyone in the vicinity of the motel being in a hurry to get cops involved, but it wasn’t a good idea to hang around.

⫯⫰⫯⫰⫯⫰⫯⫰⫯⫰⫯⫰⫯⫰⫯⫰⫯⫰⫯⫰⫯⫰⫯⫰⫯⫰⫯

Jefferson waited until the little yellow Volvo disappeared from sight. Reaching into the back seat for the leather satchel he’d packed before leaving the house this time, he got out, heading toward the motel room that Miss Belle and Mr. French had just left.

He took care of his family. He would never let it be said otherwise.


	21. Chapter 21

Belle drove with the utmost care. Spot on the speed limit, every red light, the appropriate number of car lengths behind the vehicle in front of them. It was a stark contrast to the turmoil Whit felt rolling in his chest. 

“You don’t believe I didn’t kill her, do you?” The thought refused to take its claws out of him.

She glanced at him without saying anything. That was answer enough.

His heart sank. “You’ll never trust me. I can’t blame you. You shouldn’t.”

“I trust you,” she enunciated very carefully.

“You _shouldn’t.”_ He felt it surfacing. The truth. The truth about everything he’d done since the fire. Rising up in his throat, it choked him until he opened his mouth. “I’ve been lying to you and Colette since the first time I saw you.”

“You don’t have to-”

“No, I do.”

“I don’t care.”

“You should. You don’t even know who I _am.”_

Belle stopped at a red light and he got out, walking to the side of the road.

“What the hell are you doing?” Belle called through the open door. She pulled over on the shoulder and got out, herself, stalking around the front of the car to him.

“My name isn’t William Scarlet. I didn’t even _know_ your sister, and my son isn’t hers. I only met her at the hotel a few hours before- oh, God, before.” He turned around, leaning against the car. Bending forward, he brought his hands up on either side of his neck, trying to breathe. “I met her. And her husband. And the baby. The hospital fucked up when I was taken in. I didn’t have anywhere to go. I had Bay. Milah kicked us out of her place. I had nowhere, nothing, so when Jefferson showed up-”

“It’s all right, Whit,” she said, moving closer to him.

“It’s not all right. Nowhere near it.” He looked up at her, and as her words replayed through his head, his mouth fell open.

Belle wasn’t smiling, but she wasn’t angry, either. There was more pain in her expression than anything. “It’s all right, _Whit._ I know.”

“What?” he breathed.

“I didn’t have all the details, but I got the basics.”

“You _know?”_

She nodded. “And it’s okay. I promise.”

His breath stuttered and his teeth clicked together with just about equal amounts cold and heart wrenching relief.

Belle put her arms around him, the contact only making his reaction stronger. “I should have been a bit more forthcoming about how much I know.”

He held onto fistfuls of the sides of her coat and shook his head against her shoulder. “I think I’d have bolted if you said anything.”

“I didn’t want to scare you away.” She petted his hair with her mittened hand, after a moment leaning back to look him in the face. “Whit, I fell in love with _you._ Not your name.”

“I wanted to tell you when we got Jefferson out of the garden. After we danced.” Whit looked down at the buttons on her coat, unable to meet her eyes. “I’m a coward.”

“You are not a coward.” She hugged him again, more insistently.

“I’m a liar,” he added to his self-recriminations.

“Whit,” she said into the side of his neck, “I can only speak for myself, but… the lie helped. Even after I knew it was a lie, knowing they’re all gone. I could pretend. Just let me.”

He wrapped his arms tight around her. “How long have you known?

“The day you took your ring into the jeweler’s,” she told him, and it was anything but a surprise.

Whit knew. “You saw the check.”

He felt her hum through his wool coat. “I saw the check. And I did my own looking into things.”

“I’m sorry,” he said, hating that she’d had to find out that way rather than by him mustering up some honesty.

“Don’t be. I’m not,” she murmured to him. “You’re here.”

“In the beginning, I was afraid of what would happen to me, to Bay. But Colette - I worried if she found out that he isn’t her grandson, her heart…” He stopped, knowing Belle could finish that thought. “So I committed criminal impersonation of some sort, probably a few counts of felony fraud, and I was going to marry you under false pretenses. That sums it up well.”

Belle leaned back again and he let his arms loosen around her. She moved her hands up to cup against his jaw, a wry smile curling at her lips. “All couples have their little secrets?”

He choked on a laugh. Reaching up to take her hand, he kissed it through her mitten. 

“Did you kill her?” she asked. There was no accusation in the question, only a need to know.

“No.” Whit shook his head. “I was only going back to scare her into leaving us alone. All of us.”

She searched his face, empathy pulling at her expression. 

“What are you going to call me?” he asked, so tired of being called ‘Will’ that he was beyond the telling of it.

Her fingers still at his jawline rubbed gently below his ear and his heart doubled a beat. “I’ll call you whatever you want me to call you.”

“I’m pretty attached to ‘Whit.’”

“You know, I’m pretty attached to Whit, too.”

She rose up on her tiptoes to kiss him, slow and reassuring, a point of concentrated warmth in the cold. When she pulled back, he leaned in to touch his forehead to hers. Their breath fogged together in the painfully frigid air. 

“I still want to marry you,” she told him quietly, smiling up at him.

He huffed a breath and it made a puff of condensation. “I still want to marry you, too.”

Whit reached into his pocket, bringing out the handkerchief that his mother’s now whole ring was wrapped in. He knew where it belonged now, and that wasn’t hidden away in pockets and bags. 

“Are you sure?” she asked when he tucked the handkerchief away.

Holding his hand out for hers, he nodded. “I’m sure.”

Belle took off her left mitten so that he could put the ring on her. It slipped right onto her finger as though it were always meant to be there.

Tears glistened in her eyes when she looked to him. “I love you, Whit.”

His breath caught. “Say it again?”

She put both hands on his chest and smiled brightly up at him. “I love you, Whit…”

“I love you. So much.” He covered her hands with his own, holding onto them, and this time he kissed her.

Belle pressed herself close and kissed him hard, grazing his lower lip with her teeth. By the time he broke the kiss, both were breathless all over again.

“Let’s get back in the car,” she said, pulling meaningfully at the front of his overcoat.

“Mm.” He caught one more quick kiss from her lips. “We’ll freeze to death out here. Come on.”

Her hands didn’t let go of him, though. “I plan to turn the heater on, yes,” she told him. “But I think we should get into the back seat.”

“The… back seat?” His brows drew together in confusion.

“There’s more room,” Belle pointed out, stepping away and leaving him to put two and two together.

Whit turned to ask her over the vehicle’s top, “In the car?”

“I mean, we can wait until we get home. Or ’til tomorrow, if you want,” she teased, giving him a warm look. “I was sort of assuming you wouldn’t be a stickler about the whole wedding night thing.”

“No, no compunctions about not waiting,” he said with a grin, and being that he had Bay, he felt that was fairly obvious.

She opened the driver’s side door, smiling brightly over at him. “Then get in.”


	22. Chapter 22

Whit looked down at the driveway from his bedroom window, pulling at the points of his tuxedo waistcoat. People were arriving. He watched as they made their way toward the front door. There were a handful of faces he knew from the baby shower. Most he didn’t recognize at all. Taking a deep and theoretically calming breath, he tugged at the waistcoat again.

Belle knew everything now. He’d _told_ her everything in the back seat of her car after they made love. Maybe it had blown his mind a little, and that was why he’d given her the entirety of it - about where he was from, about his father, about Milah, from the very beginning all the way through her kidnapping plot. There were points in his explanation where Belle had gotten so angry he’d had to remind her that neither his father nor Milah would be bothering any of them again.

He couldn’t help wondering whether Milah had been found, though. Surely, by now. Whit hadn’t slept a full hour all night. He didn’t think there was anything in the motel room to connect him to her, and he supposed that was a silver lining on the way it turned out she felt about him. 

From above, he could see the priest there on the steps and Colette beside him in her lavender mother-of-the-bride dress. They greeted guests. She hugged and kissed people as they went inside to make their way through the house.

There would be no bride’s side or groom’s side to the seating, for which he was grateful. It would be too pathetic, an entire swath of empty chairs staring back at him. 

Before he could turn away from the window, he saw a group of people whom he actually recognized. The three men he had the failed attempt at chit-chat with at the baby shower walked up. There was a larger, dark haired man with them.

Whit watched as they approached Colette and Father Anton. She took the priest’s hand for balance to go down the steps, placing herself directly in the group’s way. There was some exchange of words - fairly terse on Colette’s side, judging from her body language. Keith and the dark haired man laughed, and she pointed her finger at them, the gesture an angry one. Whit wished he could hear what she said. He was willing to wager their ears burned with it. Colette then pointed down the driveway rather fiercely, and the four men finally left.

Maybe everything really was going to be all right.

It began to snow - a bare flurry, drifting aimlessly down. The weather was far too cold to have the wedding outdoors, but the ceremony and reception were arranged for the ballroom looking out on the back garden. 

Everything was decorated in blue and gold, which seemed to be the family colors. He didn’t mind. Going forward, he wouldn’t be able to say that he had no one. He had family now. They were his colors, too. He lifted a hand, touching the deep navy cravat at his neck and the sapphire pin that Belle had given him for it. 

“Stop pulling at your clothes,” Jefferson fussed.

Whit smiled at his scolding. “Don’t you have the day off to _attend_ the wedding?”

“I am attending,” the butler said. “This is attending.”

He better understood Belle’s helicopter remark the longer he knew Jefferson. It was actually a bit comforting. 

“Don’t you have a plus one attending, too?” he asked, giving Jefferson a sidelong glance while fiddling with a cufflink.

Jefferson eyed him for a moment before answering. “Perhaps.”

“Tell Mr. Ambrose that the roses on the cake are spot on,” Whit said with a grin.

There was a bit of a floundering sound from Jefferson, but a smile pulled at the corners of his mouth. “I’m going downstairs to double check that things are going smoothly. If I come back to find you disheveled, there’ll be words.”

Whit continued grinning to himself, glad that the other mad had found someone who made him happy. He thought of Belle, the feeling that she made bloom in him every time he saw her, and hoped that the happiness stuck with all of them.

Jefferson wasn’t gone five minutes when there was a more delicate tap at the door. Belle came right in, holding Bay against her shoulder. “Are you decent?” she teased.

“Well, I’m clothed.” He went to them, taking his son when Bay looked to him and giving Belle a kiss when she leaned her head back in request of one. “Tempting fate, aren’t you, holding a baby in your wedding dress?”

“Oh, he’s fine,” she said, taking Bay’s hand and giving it a wiggle. “Jefferson fed and burped him while you were showering, and he doesn’t have much of a spitting up habit.”

She was beautiful, smiling up at him. Belle’s hair was done up by her mother’s hairdresser, woven into some elaborate style with holly pinned in a small bunch to one side. Her dress was raw silk with a slim, white fur lining around the wide neck, and pale blue Christmas roses were embroidered in a spray across one side of the skirt. He had no idea where it came from, perfect for her as it was, but he was certain that it was one of Colette and Jefferson’s bits of magic.

“Do you have everything?” Whit asked.

Belle looked down at herself. “Everything?”

“Are the flowers your something blue?” he hinted, nodding to her dress.

“Oh!” She stuck a foot out, moving her skirt. “Yeah, they are. My earrings are new, and my bracelet is old. It was my grandmother’s. Mama gave me this and a sixpence,” she said, showing him the delicate bit of gold and opal jewelry.

He noticed she’d left one off. “What about borrowed?” 

“I’ll find something to borrow before the ceremony,” she assured him. “It’s okay.”

“Wait.” He went to the dresser, taking his mother’s handkerchief, and held it proudly out to her. “Borrowed.”

“Oh, Whit…” Belle took it almost reverently, running a fingertip over the initials ‘F.M.G.’ and tiny, pink flowers stitched into one corner. She went up on her toes to press a lingering kiss to his cheek. “Thank you.”

“Not adhering to _that_ tradition, I see,” Jefferson observed as he stepped back into the room, raising an eyebrow at the two of them there together.

Belle grinned, rolling her eyes a little. “Because we’ve been so traditional thus far.”

“Those are going to roll right out of your head,” he warned and shook a finger at the tip of her nose.

“Well, if they haven’t by now…”

“Are you ready to begin or not?”

She looked to Whit. “I think we’re ready.”

“I’m ready as I can be, I believe,” Whit said, giving Bay a pat on the back when the baby gurgled.

Beaming, Belle turned to Jefferson. “Would you go and let Mama know?”

The butler nodded and looked at his watch. “The guests should be all arrived and seated. If they’re prompt.”

“And God help them if they’re not, right?” She ribbed him cheerfully.

“Today?” Jefferson slid his cuff back over his watch and brushed the front of his coat. “Yes, indeed.”

⫯⫰⫯⫰⫯⫰⫯⫰⫯⫰⫯⫰⫯⫰⫯⫰⫯⫰⫯⫰⫯⫰⫯⫰⫯⫰⫯

Jefferson made his way downstairs and through the foyer. As he predicted, there were no people outside other than Mrs. French and Father Anton. They waited for stragglers, he supposed. Mrs. French should have been inside, out of the cold, in position to take Miss Belle’s arm so that she could walk her daughter down the aisle. It was what they’d decided upon.

“Ma’am,” he said, stopping just next to her on the front step. “Miss Belle is ready.”

“I’ll be right there.” She smiled over at him, then looked across the lawn. Her smile faded. 

He looked to find a police cruiser pulling up into the drive. A pair of uniformed cops left the vehicle and headed toward them. Just after them, Sheriff Humbert’s car pulled in and he hurried to catch up, wearing a suit, his badge on his belt, and an expression of consternation on his face.

Jefferson set his jaw. No. Not today. He moved to head them off, but Mrs. French put a hand on his arm.

“Good morning, Sheriff!” Father Anton said. “A beautiful day, is it not?”

“It was when all I had to do today was attend a wedding,” the sheriff said, stopping near the bottom of the steps just ahead of the out of town cops.

“Morning, Father,” greeted the police officer clearly in charge - a slight statured Asian woman whose height didn’t in the least keep her from being imposing. It was rather obvious that she wasn’t there to speak with the priest, though. She looked to the lady of the house. “Colette French? May we have a word in private?”

Colette laced her fingers, letting her hands rest down her front. “You may speak to me right here, Officer…?”

“Hua. Officer Mulan Hua. I’m going to assume you still have William Scarlet-French here with you?” she asked.

“That depends,” Colette said, and Jefferson was glad that she didn’t intend to make this easy for them, whatever they meant to do.

Officer Hua gave her a longsuffering look. “We’re investigating the murder of Milah Winter.”

“Ah. Well.” Colette smiled as though she had the solution to their problem. “I _am_ the one you’ll want to speak to, then.”

“Why would that be?” asked the tall, thin black officer next to Hua.

Colette lifted her chin. “Because I killed her.”

Jefferson gaped at his employer. He clapped a hand over his face in equal parts disbelief and frustration. This was not happening.


	23. Chapter 23

There was a knock at Whit’s bedroom door, and without waiting more than a few seconds, Father Anton walked straight in. Belle was ever so glad that they weren’t up to anything.

The priest hesitated, looking at them, seeming at a loss. He was out of breath. Likely from the stairs, she figured.

“…Father Anton?” she prompted when he didn’t speak.

“I’m afraid there _may_ be a-” He huffed a breath. “A slight delay with the ceremony.”

Belle blinked. “What?”

“Why?” Whit asked.

She stepped closer to Father Anton. “What’s wrong?”

“Your mother is- apparently confessing- to murder,” he managed to get out at length.

Whit made a sound of shock akin to the one he’d made the day they slipped down on the ice. _“What?”_

There was a single, still moment of silence before Belle ran from the room.

She held her skirt up to run down the stairs and out to the front of the house, where her mother stood in complete calm, speaking with three police officers - two of whom she didn’t recognize. Graham was there, as well, arms crossed and looking on with a face that declared he didn’t believe a word of what was being said. She knew the expression well. That gave her some measure of reassurance.

“Mama?” she said, but her mother wasn’t to be so much as paused.

“It was then that I decided killing her would be more effective, so that was that,” Colette announced to them all.

The two uniformed officers exchanged a look. “I think maybe you should call your lawyer?” said the younger of the two - a man with ‘G. Muis’ on his name tag.

Colette looked from one to the other of them. “Can I not simply confess and go to jail?”

“Mother!” Belle squawked in horror. “What are you _doing?”_

“Shush, dear. I’m confessing to the murder of…” Her mother looked to Graham.

The officer whose tag read ‘M. Hua’ raised an eyebrow. “Milah Winter,” she said with as little inflection as possible.

“Yes, her.” Colette gave her a smile.

“Mama, you can’t-” Belle looked to Jefferson. “Stop her!”

He gave her a bewildered, “You think I can stop her?”

She hissed under her breath to him, “She can’t put herself in prison! Her heart can’t take it!”

“They have no proof. She doesn’t know anything about it,” he whispered so quietly the words were all but mouthed. “I cleaned up, took the bullet out of the wall.”

Colette half turned to look straight at the two of them. “You what? When?” 

“Nothing wrong with her ears,” Jefferson muttered.

Belle shook her head. “Nothing, Mama, just stop.”

“I’ve confessed, and that’s all there is to it,” Colette said, shaking her head right back at her daughter. “They’ll be taking me, now.”

Belle turned to Graham and the other pair of police, too, all of them staring at the family through their hushed conversation.

“She had nothing to do with it,” Belle told Graham directly, drawing herself up as tall as she could. “I killed that woman. She was attempting to blackmail our family. I tried to pay her off, but she wanted more.”

Jefferson’s head whipped around. He looked at her as though he could throttle her. _“Miss Belle!”_

“Belle, I’ve already confessed,” her mother said as though it were the most reasonable thing in the world. “There’s no need to lie for me, darling.”

Whit ran out of the house, going to Belle. “Sorry, I’m sorry, I had to put Bay down.”

Wide-eyed, she shook her head at him and breathed, “You should have stayed with him.”

“You paid her off with this check, is that right?” Officer Hua asked as she took an evidence bag from her jacket pocket. 

“That’s right!” Belle said at the same time her mother told the officer, “That would be correct.”

“This check. That he signed.” The officer gestured with the bag to Whit.

He wrapped his hands around Belle’s upper arms, moving her gently aside before she could get another word out of her open and furious mouth. “No. They’re both lying. I shot her.”

“Stop, all of you!” Jefferson half drowned Whit’s confession out. He turned to the sheriff. “I killed her to protect the family.”

Officer Hua laughed. She closed her eyes, visibly rolling them behind the lids before looking at the butler. “Okay, then. How many times was she shot?”

“Twice,” Belle and Whit said at once.

Jefferson tried to speak over them. “Three shots!”

“I emptied the gun,” Colette told them.

The two uniformed officers exchanged another look. “And where did you shoot her?” Officer Muis asked.

Colette rushed to get her answer out first this time. “In the motel.”

“Chest,” Jefferson said, giving her a look of disbelief.

“In the chest,” Whit answered just as Belle chimed in, “Stomach!”

Officer Hua looked exhausted. “From what location?”

“Across the room,” Belle said quickly.

“From the door. It had to be done,” Colette declared. “I would do it again.”

“She was shot twice. At close range.” Officer Hua, now done with every one of them, looked around with no small amount of annoyance. “I don’t know what’s wrong with the lot of you. I only came here to ask about the damn check.”

Officer Muis grinned, amused by the entire ordeal. “You’re all the same kind of crazy, aren’t you?”

Hua put away the evidence bag. “We _have_ the murderer. He’s in the car. You’ll have to file charges for blackmail separately.”

Graham shook his head. “I think I have to agree with Muis here on the crazy part,” he said, looking right at Belle.

She shrugged a bit sheepishly. “We stick together?”

Letting his hands slide from her arms, Whit stepped away, toward the police car.

“Kinda wishing I were part of this family,” he heard Officer Muis say behind him.

There was indeed a man sitting in the back seat, handcuffed. Stark black hair, blue eyes, his expression full of hate. Whit recognized him from the night he’d gone back to Milah’s apartment, begging for shelter. This was the boyfriend she’d claimed would help her take Bay.

“You’re sure he’s the killer?” Whit asked when Officer Hua headed back to the car.

“He still had the gun on him. We have cordite residue and fingerprints. There was blowback on a shirt in the laundry,” she explained. “He confessed when we found him.”

“Not that confessions are hard to come by today…” Officer Muis said with a chuckle.

Whit couldn’t take his eyes off the man. “Any idea why?”

“Money, apparently,” Hua told him. “He tried cashing the check, and the bank teller hit her panic button. She kept him busy ’til we got there.”

“Said he thought she was going to take the money and leave him,” Muis added before getting into the passenger side.

Whit forced himself to turn away from the car. He walked back to Belle, taking her hand when she reached for him. Father Anton came out with Bay still in his arms, once more out of breath.

“No one’s been arrested?” the priest asked, sounding both surprised and relieved.

“Someone was,” Belle said. “Just not any of us.”

When the police cruiser had gone, Graham moved past them to go inside, taking his badge off to slip it into his pocket now that his presence wasn’t an official one.

Running her fingers along one temple to smooth her hair there, Colette sighed. “I would like to speak with Belle and William alone, if the rest of you would oblige.”

Jefferson made a gesture of invitation back into the house to the priest, and Whit held his hands out for his son. Father Anton returned Bay to him before going in. Snugging the baby close, Whit turned to Colette, well aware of the guilt written heavily in his face. As though sensing how alone he felt, Belle slipped her hand around the bend of his arm.

Colette looked at the three of them. “Who was Milah Winter?”

“My son’s mother,” Whit admitted, the truth coming free with so little effort now that it left him lightheaded. “I was never married to Lacey.”

She tilted her head down in a look of exasperation that he’d seen more than once from Belle. “And?”

“I only knew her for a few hours,” he went on when she pushed. “She helped us when we were in danger. She was kind to us - Lacey and Will both were.”

“There was a case of mistaken identity, Mama,” Belle said, doing her best to help.

“Mistaken identity. At the hospital. And then I lied to you…” Shameful tears burned Whit’s eyes. He opened his hand protectively over Bay’s back. “I should have told you the truth as soon as I met you.”

Colette looked to Belle. “You know all of this? How long have you known?”

Belle elected not to tell her mother just how little time it had been. “Not long.”

“What _is_ the truth, then?” her mother asked.

“Mama,” Belle said softly, “they had nowhere else to go.”

“I’m not as oblivious as you think me to be. Either of you.” Colette flicked a dry look from Belle to Whit. “I’d gathered by the fits you both went into about my will that something was a bit awry somewhere. I didn’t know it went quite this far, but I knew there was _something.”_

“This is the only place that’s ever felt like home. With your family,” Whit confessed, his voice quiet and strained. “I meant to leave as soon as I could, tell you the truth in a note. But I found out about your heart. And by that time, I loved you all. I didn’t _want_ to leave, and I kept finding reasons not to until-”

“Until that woman sent you a letter?” she finished, having put it together quite well. “If your name isn’t William, what is it? What is the baby’s name?”

“My name is Whitney Gold. My son’s is Bay. Bayard,” he told her. “I’m only sorry he isn’t really your grandchild.”

Belle held herself closer to him. “Call him Whit.”

“Whit,” Colette repeated. She gave a nod to Bay. “I disagree that this child isn’t my grandson.”

Whit looked curiously at her, then at Belle, whose apprehensive expression was blooming into a smile.

“There will be some things to look after, as far as the real William and Neal are concerned,” Colette said, another deep sigh bringing a heaviness to her face that took her some time to force away. “Today, I want to _not_ have to grieve. One day. Do you hear me?”

“Yes, ma’am,” he responded, the only way he could respond to her request.

Belle nodded. “Yes, Mama.”

“I can’t say you did the right thing, lying. If you hadn’t, though… If you hadn’t, well, we wouldn’t be here, would we?” Colette looked him in the eye with a smile colored by sadness. There was no anger there. No offense or outrage.

Whit looked to Belle, not sure her mother was saying what he thought she might be saying, but Belle’s eyes were wide, too.

Reaching out, Colette offered her hands to Bay. He shook an arm wildly at her. She took him, smiling, and he gave her a happy gurgle as loud as he could manage. “You know, Whitney,” she said, “my heart could handle a few more of these.”

“More…” He shook his head while Belle laughed. “What?”

“Three. Maybe four. We have more than enough room, don’t you think?” Colette went on as though speaking to herself.

Whit turned to Belle. “Four?”

“She’s teasing,” Belle assured him. “I think.”

Her mother brushed a cheek against the top of Bay’s head. “I most certainly am not.”

“We’ll discuss that,” Belle said, giving her mother a look.

“Oh, yes, we are going to have a _much_ longer talk. All of us,” Colette told her. She patted Whit’s shoulder on her way back into the house. “But for now, Whitney, dear, we have guests waiting to see a wedding, and I think we shouldn’t disappoint them.”

⫯⫰⫯⫰⫯⫰⫯⫰⫯⫰⫯⫰⫯⫰⫯⫰⫯⫰⫯⫰⫯⫰⫯⫰⫯⫰⫯

“The wrong name?” Father Anton whispered to Colette, who stood on the ballroom dais to have a short and sweet discussion.

She reached up to place a hand on his shoulder. “That’s all right, isn’t it? The ceremony can go on, and we have have the license re-done as soon as possible?”

“It can go on, but the marriage won’t technically be legal until you obtain one with the correct names.”

“You won’t have a problem performing it?”

The priest looked to Whit and Belle in front of him and back to Colette, raising his eyebrows. “Well, seeing as we aren’t in a church, I suppose it isn’t _strictly_ a religious ceremony… I don’t see why not.”

Colette gave a satisfied nod. “Good. Excellent.” She turned to Belle. “Do you want to walk back down the aisle, darling?”

“I just want us to be married,” Belle said softly to her mother. She took Whit’s hand and a step nearer to his side.

With a grin and a fluttering wave that told them to go right ahead, Colette held her hand out for Jefferson to help her step down. He went with her to her seat, front and center, and sat with her on one side, Mr. Ambrose on the other.

Father Anton waited for a moment, giving them time to switch Bay from Mr. Ambrose’s arms to Colette’s and settle down, before opening his prayer book. “We have gathered to celebrate the joining of Whitney Gold and Belle French in the covenant of love,” he began.

A wave of murmurs rose from the guests when Father Anton spoke their names. Whit felt Belle squeeze his hand as the priest went on with the beginning of the ceremony. 

He made it through his vows with less nerves than he expected. Perhaps he’d exhausted them. Tears, though, he hadn’t exhausted. They brimmed and fell through his own vows and Belle’s, and he found tears on her face, as well

Father Anton had the rings. He said a quick, sweet blessing over them before handing the smaller of the pair to Whit. Whit slipped it onto Belle’s finger and said, as he had without the ring during the rehearsal, “Receive this ring as a symbol of my abiding love,” meaning it with every fiber of his being.

A soft hiccup cut through Belle’s tears, and they both had trouble keeping a straight face. The priest gave her Whit’s ring. Instead of putting his ring right onto his finger, she paused, holding it up so that he could see the inside of the band. He squinted to read an engraving.

 _Whitney Gold-French_ ♡ _Belle Gold-French_

“It’s in my ring, too,” she whispered to him. “I didn’t know everything would come out, and I just… wanted your name.”

“I’ll still be Mr. French, then,” he said with a shaky smile.

The priest cleared his throat just enough they could hear him.

“Receive this ring as a symbol of my abiding love,” she recited, and she sniffled as she placed it on his finger.

Father Anton nodded his cheerful approval and went quickly on. “God so join you together that nothing shall ever part you. Inasmuch as Whitney and Belle have exchanged vows of love and fidelity in the presence of God and this company, I now pronounce that they are bound to one another in a holy covenant, as long as they both shall live. Amen.”

The pages of his prayer book patted together as he closed it. He gave them an expectant look. “Well, go on, then.”

His heart feeling like it would crack his ribcage open, Whit leaned to kiss Belle. Not to be held back by a chaste peck, she grabbed hold of his suit lapels, kissing him as though she would never stop.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> And they lived happily ever after! <3 
> 
> Thank you for reading!


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